How many times have we uttered that phrase today? What about this week? How bout this month? You prob have no idea because we say it so much. In fact for some people that has replaced the tradition greeting "Hello" (or at the very least it's a close 2, usually uttered in the same breath.) Maybe you said it to the checkout clerk. Maybe you hollered it to your neighbor as you got into your car. Maybe it has been asked of you! and what is the typical answer?
Well I have categorized them as follows:
1. Pretty Good. (This usually means everything is status quo)
2. Not to bad. (Pretty self-explanatory. Also is often followed up with: "You??")
3. Fine (I don't even want to try to explain that.....)
So if you received one of those answers to your question of "How are you doing?" in the past week please raise your hand. (Stage note: Everyone raise hand)
Ah I see thats just about everyone! What did that tell you about that person? Did you actually learn anything about them? Did you really WANT to know how they were ACTUALLY doing?
My guess is that the answer is no.
Why is that? Especially when we are interacting with other believers? Why is our default response to that question, one of the above options?
I know I'm horribly guilty of this. I may be having the worst day of my life and How am I doing? "Oh pretty good. Hey did you see that football game......"
Though I will say that I have been trying hard to actually try and look through the "pretty good" response and see whats really on the other end of that question. And that can be really hard. But I will say that some of my best relationships have been formed by just me caring about them. Thats it. Sometimes its just that easy.
When people ask me how I am doing, they often seem perplexed, because the only time I won't actually answer them, is if I'm pretty sure that they would just get annoyed at the fact that it seemed like I didn't understand that they didn't actually want to know....
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