What Comes Out of You When You Get Squeezed?

One of my favorite definitions of character is “a fixed, predictable image.” When you really think about that, it’s not hard to see that what your kids see when you are at home behind closed doors, when no one is watching, should be the same thing that everyone sees out in the open.

Many years ago, a pastor’s wife did a demonstration in children’s church. She had the kids all come up to the front and gather around a table. She then asked for a couple of volunteers to come and sit at the table. She placed a blindfold over each child’s eyes. She then cut an orange and a lemon in half. She asked each child to tilt their head back and open their mouth. She squeezed lemon juice in each child’s mouth and watched as they contorted their faces while the other children giggled. She then squeezed orange juice in each child’s mouth. Then she removed the blindfolds. She asked the onlookers to be very quiet as she asked the test subjects a couple of questions.

First she asked them how the juices tasted. Both children related how the lemon (as they pointed to the fruit on the table) was really sour and the orange was sweet. She asked them how they knew which one was which? How did they know that it was the lemon that was sour, or the orange that was sweet. They said that “everyone knows that!!” She then asked how they knew that? The children were aghast at the question! They said it was because the lemon was ALWAYS sour! And the orange was ALWAYS sweet!

She asked whether the act of squeezing the fruit had caused them to taste the way they tasted? No, no, the children insisted again that the fruits were always the same.

Then she turned their attention to each other. She asked each child to think about what came out of them when they got squeezed? She wondered how they responded when they were pressed. She went on to say that we should all strive to be the same no matter what our circumstances. She stated that we should try to be consistent. She said this was character. I loved that!

So what comes out of you when you get squeezed? Perhaps that should be something that we work on each day in our lives. To be consistent. To have character.