This message, “SAMTSIRHC YRREM,” got me thinking. Messages can look vastly different depending on where one is standing. Messages don’t have to look different, but the majority of passerby-ers are in too much of a hurry to slow down and take a good look at the messages they see.

This message reading can be applied on many different levels. The messages we call ourselves – fat, ugly, unloved, etc. – can be misinterpreted, as well as the messages and labels our friends use for our groups.

As a culture, we are inundated with messages about what we should eat, wear, do, and think. We don’t have time to read the majority of the messages being offered to us. But what if the majority of messages we are reading, we read backwards? And what if the majority of messages we send out are read backwards by others?

The thing is, most words read backwards don’t make sense at all.  LANIMIRC. NAITSIRHC. YAG. MILSUM. LOOC. HSIWEJ. LAREBIL. DESUBA. DEVOL. DETAH. DENROCS. LUFPLEH. TCIDDA. And the words that do don’t make any sense in context.

For laughs and giggles, I looked up different words that make words backwards. The list includes:

Dog – God

Mood – Doom

Live – Evil

Raw – War

Tons – Snot

We can be saying we worship God but from the other side of the window, it might look as though we’re worshiping dog. Or we can want someone to live/to do evil.

I’m not trying to apply this concept as a universal truth. Maybe everyone in your life perfectly interprets everything you’re saying. Good for you. But for the rest of us, we need to be careful about who we say we are and what we say we’re about.  Chances are, it doesn’t look the same from the other side of the window.

I don’t know about you, but I want to be deeply known and understood and I don’t want the signals I’m putting out to get in the way. I’m not sure where non-verbal messages and actions fit in to the equation. I imagine that they make this whole equation a bit more complicated. But I do think the same principle applies; actions and nonverbal messages can also be misinterpreted just as much (if not more) and need to be kept in line.

In the Pursuit of God, AW Tozer writes “sometimes the best way to see a thing is to look at it’s opposite.”  How do we look at the opposite? Well, we cannot do so with closed curtains.

There’s a reason a window has two sides. Windows are used to see out and to see in.  People can contribute valuable information from the other side of the window… but they might be less likely to do so if the signs in our windows drive them away.  We can learn from looking out the window, past the labels of ourselves and our groups. We can’t just be looking inward and letting the labels shape our lives. There’s gotta be more to a full life than that.

What messages (good/bad/ugly) are you embracing?

What might those messages look like from the outside?

How do we get others to see the world the way we see it? What would it mean to invite others into our “homes”, practically?

How do we hold our ground and still cater to people’s needs and understanding?