I have a beef with DFW. And DFW has a bit of a beef with me.
I had just landed at the popular Dallas airport. My mind was filled with two things … the busy day of client meetings ahead and my need to find a bathroom. So with my overnight bag in tow, I began walking toward the rental cars, looking for the familiar bathroom sign. That’s when adventure began.
You see, there are times in my life when I only pay casual attention to the details around me. This was one of those times. So when I saw a sign extending from the wall with a woman on the inside and man on the outside, my mind said, “women’s bathroom first, men’s bathroom second” and I didn’t give it a second thought. Until, that is, it was just red-faced me with some 30 women staring back at me. I had entered the wrong door!
Now if that had been the end of it, I would never tell this story … my embarrassment would stay with me. But you see as I quickly exited the women’s room, I passed men coming in. And as I got outside, women were going in and quickly coming back out of the men’s restroom door. With a simple act of carelessness, for few seconds that day at DFW, I had upset the entire bathroom ecosystem. Deciding it best to be somewhere else, I just slipped into the stream of hurried passengers and found another rest room to use.
As I drove to my first appointment, I couldn’t help but think about how much I had influenced total strangers, how they followed me just based on the fact that they thought I knew where I was going. And it struck me how important it is to pay attention to the details of how I carry out my life, especially my Christian walk.
Each day we all walk through life as a statement to others around us. That day my statement to total strangers was that I was a man and others assumed that I was where a man should be. And so they followed me into where they weren’t supposed to be. If I had stopped and said aloud, “Follow me into the women’s room,” no one would have come along. But when I said nothing and just acted wrong, they simply assumed what I did was right.
That day at DFW I learned again that there’s no such thing as a part time Christian. No matter who you are or where you are, people are following you. They are deciding what is proper behavior for a disciple of Jesus Christ based not on what they hear from you, but on what they see in you.
Misleading signs are everywhere. But they’re no excuse for a careless walk with Christ. The stakes are too high. There’s a whole world out there, following you.