First Impressions

Since graduating from high school I have lived in three states and about eight different cities. Needless to say I am constantly meeting new people and kid you not as I was typing this a guy at Caribou approached me needing help finding directions to an interview in Bloomington.

What do we notice first about people? The way they look? Dress? Talk? How they present themselves? A friendly air about them? Whether we like to admit it or not first impressions are mainly based on shallow presuppositions. We accept or reject further relationship based on a limited amount of information.

I have a friend named Jeremy who is the coolest guy I know. He is the bomb.com.net.org.gov.edu. In wikipedia next to "cool" is a pic of this dude flashing a bright smile. It sounds like I'm exaggerating, but anyone who knows him knows that he is a solid man of God with incredible character and integrity who also happens to be super cool. Naturally when Jeremy was single I thought it was my right, no my duty as his friend to hook the brother up. We were both living in CA at the time and the beautiful ladies were plentiful. My first attempt fell flat when the first words out of her mouth to Jeremy were, "Do you like my shoes? They were $200." I totally mistook the first impression I had of this girl. I focused on the shallow points of her beauty and style and thought that she would be a good match. I was dead wrong. I was so wrong that the next time I tried to set Jeremy up he almost declined my offer...but thankfully he trusted that I'd learned my lesson about first impressions.

This brings me to Mikaela, a young woman from MN who had just moved to CA a few months before. A mutual friend was throwing a New Year's party and thought as fellow Minnesotans we needed to meet. By the time we met, she was heading out the door on to another party, but we did talk for ten minutes. Seriously, only ten minutes! Of all the words I used to describe Jeremy, she surpassed them all. In ten minutes I got a picture of an amazingly beautiful, sincere woman with an even more amazing heart. Her outside captured you, but her heart made your mouth hang wide open. I called Jeremy the next day and the rest is history. They were married last August.

It makes me think first impressions really are important, but not in the way I've always thought. It says in the Bible that there was nothing special about Jesus' appearance that would attract people, but that is just what He did. He attracted people by the droves with his heart. So maybe I need to think less about my wardrobe choices and hairstyle as I do the condition of my heart. We all say that we want to work on our character, but do we really believe character can come out in a first impression? I do.