The Green and White Striped Shirt

by Lori Wilson

What does the Lord require of you? To do justice, to love kindly, and to walk humbly with your God. — Micah 6:8

I have a memory I've never quite been able to put down.

I was in first grade. A new girl named Ruth had joined our class. People said she lived in a chicken coop. I knew what a chicken coop was, and I was certain no one actually lived in one. Ruth seemed strange to me. Different. And somehow, in the way that children can be brutally unconscious about these things, different felt like a problem to be solved.

One early fall day on the playground, a group of us decided to get Ruth. I remember sitting on her stomach, pinning her arms down, while other kids yelled at her. I remember a teacher pulling me off. And there my memory of the event itself ends.

But the image that followed stays with me still. Ruth standing up, grass stuck in her medium brown hair, tears streaked down her face. She was wearing a green and white striped long-sleeved shirt, brown pants, and loafers. I can still see it exactly.

I hate this memory.

Not because it's dramatic, in the landscape of human cruelty, it was a small thing. But because I know what it was. I didn't love kindly that day. I treated Ruth as though she didn't matter. As though being different from the rest of us was somehow offensive. I didn't reflect God's love that morning on the playground. If anything, I blotted it out.

Later in elementary school, Ruth and I did become friends. I even went to her home once. And yes, it was a converted chicken coop, part of an old farm building, made into a home for her family. It was humble and real and nothing like what the cruelty of playground rumor had made it sound. Ruth moved away at the end of elementary school. I've never spoken to her since.

There is no tidy resolution to this story. I can't go back and find Ruth. I can't undo the morning on the playground. What I can do is let it ask me something.

Micah 6:8 doesn't say love kindly when it's easy or love kindly when the other person seems like you. It says love kindly, full stop. And I think the invitation buried in that small phrase is this: every person I encounter carries the image of God. Ruth carried it. The child who seems strange carries it. The person whose life looks nothing like mine carries it. When I fail to love kindly, I'm not just being unkind. I'm failing to recognize the sacred in the person right in front of me.

I've thought about what made that morning possible. I was six years old and I didn't know better, that's true. But I also didn't pause to wonder what Ruth's life felt like from the inside. I didn't ask what it might mean to arrive somewhere new, to be talked about, to be the one who was different. Loving kindly begins, I think, in that pause. In the moment before we act, when we might choose to wonder about another person rather than judge them.

A wise teacher once told me that to love kindly, you need to ask yourself one question: How do I want another person to feel about themselves in my presence? It's a question that has stayed with me. Because it turns loving kindly from an abstract virtue into a daily, concrete choice.

Ruth, wherever you are. I'm sorry. And I'm grateful. Because your green-and-white-striped shirt has been teaching me about loving kindly for a very long time.

For Your Reflection

1. Is there a memory you carry, like mine with Ruth, of a time when you did not love kindly? What does that memory still ask of you?

2. Who in your life right now might be carrying the image of God in a way that is easy to overlook or dismiss?

3. What would it mean for you to pause, before you act or react, and ask how you want another person to feel about themselves in your presence?

4. Where is God inviting you to love kindly today, especially toward someone who feels different or unfamiliar?

Closing Prayer

God of every face and every story, forgive me for the times I have failed to see you in the person standing right in front of me. For the times I have treated difference as a threat, and familiarity as the measure of worth.

Teach me the pause. The moment before I act, where I might choose wonder over judgment, and kindness over fear.

Help me to love the way you love, without condition, without categories, without needing the other person to be anything other than who they are.

And for the Ruths in my life, the ones I have hurt, the ones I cannot find, the ones I cannot fix, may your mercy cover what mine could not.

Amen.