Plates

I was driving down a street not two miles from my home and I spotted a car with the license plate “zero light.”  In the state where I reside, a personalized plate can have seven letters, so this license plate actually read, “0 LIGHT.”  How comical, I thought to myself, to find a car proud of having no light followed immediately by my car, whose license plate bears the letters HVN, meaning ‘heaven’.

I felt a little smug.

I studied the car in front of me further.  It had the often-seen bumper sticker “Coexist” with its symbols of multiple belief systems. This bumper sticker was mounted directly above the “zero light”.  I felt a little smug that my car’s moniker lifted the thoughts of other drivers, while the driver in front of me dragged them down.  

That night at dinner, I bring up the topic this license plate and as a punch line I take the time to spell out the license plate. “I get it!” announces my young adult son, “It says, ‘Oh, light!’”  

“No, it doesn’t,” I counter.

“Sure it does,” he contradicts, “and the bumper sticker above seals the deal.  A world where we can all work together peaceably is a world filled with light, indeed!”

Smack!  How did I miss it?  Why did I assume a driver would want to post a negative message?  Humbly, I realized it was my own bias.  One of the symbols on the bumper sticker was of a faith system I held little respect for, and my own bias had colored my interpretation of the personalized plate.

Dagger to the heart.  My interpretation of the plate certainly said more about me than it did the other driver!

Dagger to the heart.  My interpretation of the plate certainly said more about me than it did the other driver! What in our lives could be improved if we but removed our own biases when looking at a situation?

“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?  How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank is your own eye?  You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eyes, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.”  Matthew 7:3-5

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