"Woe to thee that spoilest, and thou wast not spoiled; and dealest treacherously, and they dealt not treacherously with thee! when thou shalt cease to spoil, thou shalt be spoiled; and when thou shalt make an end to deal treacherously, they shall deal treacherously with thee."
Isaiah 33:1
I'm in the process of buying a house right now, which will be my fourth time through the process. It's a complex thing, and there is a lot of back and forth with everyone trying to get the best deal possible. Reading this with that as background, I think I realized that at least for me a lot of the process was about "winning," or getting a good deal, rather than it being about people, and the whole thing where God asks "as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise" (Luke 6:31).
So today, my lesson is to go back to the table and try to treat the people on the other side as I would want to be treated, or as I would treat my favorite person... to make sure that I am not trying to spoil or deal treacherously. I don't know if you all ever have things like that in your life where you depersonalize and it becomes about some generic process rather than about real people, but if you do maybe there is a bigger lesson there for us all.
Let's try to remember that even when we are stressed out about spending a lot of money, or when we don't feel like we have a lot of choices and we want to scrape every last bit of value from a situation, we need to remember God and his children... our brothers and sisters out there on the other side. Sales calls maybe, or door to door proselyting (I was a missionary, I know how that feels on both sides)... even in uncomfortable or annoying situations or where we think the whole thing is stacked against us, let's take a step back and make sure that we aren't answering spoiling and treachery with our own, and let's *definitely* make sure that we aren't the ones starting it. :) I don't think that God wants us all to bankrupt ourselves, but if it is something that we would do for someone that we love, then why not do it for a stranger that we know God loves? Maybe that will help us learn to love others better than we do now.
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