Knocking Off the Labels

Why do many of us feel like we have to put people and brothers and sisters in categories or label them as “such and such” What I mean is this, if certain people do things differently than we do, we label them “different” or “whatever they are into”. I even catch myself putting labels on people who may not see eye to eye on things with me. It kind of reminds me of name calling in elementary school! How old am I? Surely I am over that. Gosh, it’s funny though because everyone does it, even those who may not even know what he or she is doing. But the reality is, we are just people, nothing more, nothing less. We may not do the same things, or anything of the sort, but that does not mean that I have a right to label them. Now see, did you notice that I labeled all of you as being “ a labeler”. Look at the bold text. It’s so easy to get caught up in it. Please forgive me for I will just label myself.

I was recently reminded of a children’s storybook that I love. It is called, “You Are Special”. I can’t remember the author’s name, but it’s kind of about the same thing. In this town these wooden people would have black dot stickers and bright star stickers and would go around the whole town putting stickers on each other for what they did. The bright star stickers were when they did something good or something they liked, and the black dot stickers were for when they did bad or something they didn’t like. Finally, to make a long story short, this one wooden person had only black dots and was feeling really down, and one day met one wooden person with no black dots, or no bright stars. She was completely unlabeled. The black dotted wooden person wanted to know how she didn’t have any marks and she told him that she went to the wood maker and he took them off just by visiting with him! Come to find out, it was true and the little wooden person lost of his marks because he found out that his creator, the wood maker, didn’t use marks to judge people but used love and the marks then would fall off.

So, I am ready to knock off the labels or marks I have put on anybody. Father doesn’t label me, so I know that is not what I should be doing!