DEALING WITH SANDPAPER PEOPLE GOD’S WAY

When you read the term sandpaper people, I bet you immediately knew what I meant, and I imagine a few faces might have even popped up before your eyes! These are the rough, abrasive kind of people you bump up against as you go about doing life. It could be someone you deal with only for a moment, like your server at a restaurant or the cashier in a check-out line. It could be someone you have to deal with on an almost daily basis, such as a surly co-worker or a demanding boss. Or worse yet, it could be a family member within your own home. These are the type of people who are irritating, agitating, rough, harsh, abrasive. They make rubbing up against them uncomfortable at the very least and painful or even damaging at its worst.

Doesn’t it seem like there is at least one person in your life at any given time who is like this? While the sandpaper person’s face may vary, the main issue is the same: Why is this person in my life, and how do I deal with them? Perhaps God has placed them in your life for a double purpose. Maybe, just maybe, they could help you, and you could help them.

How can a sandpaper person help you?

Sandpaper people do for Christians what sandpaper products do for metal or wood. They remove the rough edges. Did you know that sandpaper comes in different grits? There is coarse sandpaper used for heavy sanding and stripping; medium grade sandpaper for smoothing rough surfaces and removing small imperfections; and fine grit sandpaper finishes off the surface to silky smooth perfection. In some projects, you have to work through the stages of sandpaper from coarse to medium to fine, because there are so many different layers of scratches and roughness. As you go through life getting bumped or carelessly handled, you inevitably pick up some scratches and dents and rough places along the way. Your loving Creator is not content to leave you that way. He uses sandpaper people to smooth off your rough edges as you learn to let God have His way in you. Since you probably wouldn’t have the strength or the inclination to deal with them on your own, you have to ask Him for the help and power to respond in humility, to display loving-kindness, and to extend forgiveness. You are God’s workmanship (Eph 2:10), and He promises to finish any work He has begun in you (Phil 1:6). He desires that you end your course looking like His beloved, perfect Son Jesus. Sandpaper people are actually a part of God’s master-craftsman process of making you the finished, perfected masterpiece that He wants you to be.

How can you help a sandpaper person?

First of all, you can’t do what you probably want to do…dodge and dock, run and hide, or worse yet, punch them in the kidney! Although that would be a natural reaction, I think God has a loftier goal in mind. What if you stopped hiding from these difficult people and decided to be God’s tool of choice to confront them with His love? What if you decided to get your hands dirty and risk more abrasions for the sake of helping someone who is living in a world of hurt? What if the sandpaper person is exhibiting a silent plea for help, much like a child or teenager who is acting out? Maybe they need someone strong enough – and loving enough – to help them stop their cycle of hurtful behavior.

Secondly, it can help to stir up compassion for the sandpaper person if you remember that hurt people hurt people. Haven’t you found that to be true in your own life? I know I’m less careful with people’s feelings when I am feeling hurt, lonely, disappointed, angry, neglected, or abandoned. What if you are the person God wants to use for them to experience His incomparable love, grace, and mercy? In this way you give them a great gift. There is nothing that softens my hard heart and smooths my rough edges like someone showing me great kindness and compassion, especially when I know I’m not deserving of it.

But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked.Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful. (Lk 6:35-36)

A prayer:

Father, I know you want me to love people like You love them, and to show mercy to the ungrateful and the wicked just as You do. I confess I don’t have the desire or the strength in myself to do it on my own. I need Your grace to play the part You want me to play in my sandpaper person’s life. Help me remember all the ways I’ve experienced Your unconditional love, forgiveness, and acceptance, even when I was at my ugliest. Then help me display that to the difficult-to-love person You’ve divinely placed in my life. In Jesus’ mighty name, amen.

For reflection:

--- Ask the Lord to show you areas in your life that are still rough and need smoothing out. Has He placed a sandpaper person in your life to help you with that? How can you cooperate with God – and stop resisting –in the work He’s trying to do in you?

--- Think of a sandpaper person in your life. How could you show love and do good to them this week? Determine in your heart to continue displaying God’s kindness to them.