Square Pegs, Round Holes

There is an old cliché about not being able to fit a square peg into a round hole. Of course, there is the wise guy who says to just get a smaller square peg. I remember buying a toy for my kids when they were young that taught them about those shapes. It was a plastic ball and it pulled apart. The top half was red and the bottom half was blue. There were yellow plastic pieces inside that fell out when you opened it and they were all different shapes: round, square, star, half-circle. There were holes in the ball and the game was to put the correct piece through the correct hole. Obviously, the object of the toy was to teach shape recognition to the child who played with it.

The same cliché has also been applied to people to describe why we should not have certain ones in our life. The reasons may be financial status, religion, skin color, nationality, or just about any other reason that can be applied. Maybe it is a long standing family feud, such as the Hatfields and McCoys or the Sutton-Taylor Feud. One famous family feud was celebrated in fiction: Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Regardless of the reason behind keeping people apart, it is not part of God’s plan for us. God does not teach us to reject people out of our lives; He teaches that we should love everyone, even those who are our enemies.

Throughout the gospels, Jesus is often seen meeting with people who are outcasts. He met and talked to prostitutes, tax collectors, cripples, people with leprosy, Romans, and Samaritans. Even when he died on the cross, he was in the company of sinners, the two thieves who were crucified with him. The strict rules of the time dictated the people he was allowed to talk to and those he was supposed to avoid. He was a constant problem for those charged with enforcing Jewish law at the time because he routinely flaunted it. His message was that the old laws of the Old Testament were no longer in force, that he came to change that part of society and institute a new order, a new set of rules. The new bottom line was belief in him as the savior and all were invited to take part and change regardless of their shape.

We will always have differences between people, whether they are strangers, co-workers, friends or family. We have to remember that while there are differences, they should not be the reason for us to behave towards them in a way that is different from what Jesus Christ taught us and showed us. His message was to love one another, even those who may be an enemy. As a lady I know once said, you have to love them, but you don’t have to invite them to dinner.

How about you? When you meet someone for the first time, do you look for the ways they won’t fit? Do you then decide to avoid them or stay away from having a relationship with them? Do you look, instead, for those differences and apply the rules of the red and blue ball described above? While each piece had to fit into its own hole, when the game was finished, all of the pieces were inside the ball. That is the way it is with God. It doesn’t matter what our shape is, there is still a hole in His ball that will match our shape and He will be there waiting for us. While we are on His earth, can we do less than apply His rules?