Don’t you ever get tired of those who are always right, while pointing out what you are doing wrong?

It’s already a bad day, fighting off the anxiety that surges down to the bottom of your toes, you try coaching yourself to “Keep that chin up.” Yet no sooner do you release a deep sigh convinced that, “It’s going to be okay” when out of nowhere comes an imaginary finger wagging right in your face. “I’ve blown it,” you admit as this self-imposed shame creeps in and through your veins, “I’ve been entrusted with something more important then my fretful worries and proven myself untrustworthy, again.”

Now tell me.
1.     Are you in a courtroom in front of a judge with a panel of jurors, who have already made up their mind?
2.     Are you late for work because when you tried to flag down drivers to help in the pouring rain the cars just drove around you, a solid stream of passing headlights?
3.     Are you trying to care for your disquieted children, covering them with kisses, assuring them (and yourself) that everything is going to be all right when everything is going so wrong?
4.     Not necessarily any, but maybe some, or all the above?

Where do you find yourself when the pointed finger is saying it is right and therefore you are wrong?

The condemning feeling we experience is when any pointing finger attests to the right way – to a flawless life that we obviously are not living.  The best intended pointy finger gets us to feel really bad, especially if it is working off an assumption that a specific truth reveals the secret to this picture-perfect life, and while you are fully aware that no one on earth is capable of living such a life, you believe someone must be, which requires you to tell yourself that you are all wrong.

You can feel the humiliating burn from the condemning finger, which is causing you to disconnect from everyone around you. You find yourself applying intelligent thought or self-made rationalizations to your current situation, which can only secure moderate inroads.  More often, you simply watch yourself silently slink away into the nothingness.

All of us that hurt feel the proliferation of both the spoken and unspoken pointy finger. However, hardly any of us recognize that the primary source of such condemnation is found within our own picture-perfect Christian environment amongst other want-to-be perfect Christians, where there is no sustained and permanent change taking place. What’s more, we tend to derail the pointy finger off onto others, forcing them into the world unarmed, unhealed, alone, and just like us, unchanged.

To give an alternative to these routes of action and provide a chance to change our culture – a chance to change ourselves – we need to rewrite our own stories from today’s real life scenarios.

To serve as a real life example, let’s start with today’s scenario: It is already a bad day. You are fighting off the anxiety that surges down to the bottom of your toes. You place the call.  “There has been an accident.  I totaled your car.  I am so very sorry.”  You wait for the silence at the other end to start screaming into your ear.

“Are you all right?  What about the children?” the voice on the other end of the phone asks.  His words for your personal worth feel as if they are coming straight from an angel.

“Yes, we are all right.  But your car…” you trail off, worrying. Where the heck am I going to find the money to pay for the damage I have done?

“Thank God everyone is in one piece,” he says.  “Now, where are you?”

You tell him.

“Do you have any money?” he asks, and you say you do.

“Call a cab and get your kids to school and yourself to work.”

“What about the car?”

“Bother the car.  I will call a tow truck. You make sure you get to where you need to go.”

“Aren’t you angry?” you ask.

“Of course not, it is just a car.  Off you go, missy, this is the first day of the rest of your life.”

The absolute aloneness lifts. You connect. A soft wind of energy creates a quiet, “Thank you” as you hang up the phone. Gathering your babies into your arms for a further shot of momentum, you call for a cab.

Everyday, we are given opportunities to choose an alternative route of action from the incriminating pointy finger to life-changing grace, and everyday we share the chance to change our culture and those within it through our real everyday life scenarios.

And that is why the “Catch” is delivered to you today, tomorrow and the next day to keep us alert to applying more than just intelligent thought to what we do in our everyday lives, to wake us up to those around us – wake us up to each other – wake us up to walk alongside one another, to experience connection, and as a result, to change and sustain the lives of those around us because acts of love are taking place, not just words.

We understand we do not change overnight nor do our entrenched ideas and beliefs.  Nevertheless, one thing is certain, the “Catch” exists to recall to our hearts and our minds that God never meant for anyone to judge another, but rather He calls us to walk alongside one another, connect, and trust Him to work His love through us in real life experiences, because where there are acts of love taking place, lives will change.

The Catch exists to remind us that there is absolutely no reason for any of us to accept a pointy finger wagging in front of our faces without a solution that is offered in action-oriented love, and there is certainly no acceptable reason for any one of us to deflect that critical finger to anyone we stumble across – because with God there is nothing random in anyone we mee