大象传媒

Art Historian, Dr Jim Harris

听

On Monday, I went to a memorial service for a former colleague.听 These things are often a duty or an obligation, and it鈥檚 true that they're seldom an unalloyed pleasure.听 But this time I really wanted to be there, to honour the person we were remembering.

At first, my colleague and I weren't exactly friends.听 In fact, we'd started off as antagonists. I was doing one of those glamorous jobs that involve setting out a lot of chairs for meetings and she told me I was setting them out wrong.

Now, as a man then in his early forties with not-inconsiderable experience in setting out chairs, I didn't take too kindly to this, so I told her and we had a bit of a standoff about the seating.

From there, things occasionally got worse before they got better.听 But they did get better, as I saw her more often and understood her better. What I'd read as pickiness, I began to see was real pride in her work.听 What I'd read as patronising, I saw was genuine warmth and affection.

And then, in what others of our friends and colleagues said at her memorial, I saw still more sides to her character.听 Her sense of humour. Her commitment to social justice.听 Her talent as an artist.听 None of which tallied at all with my first impression of her in the great chair dispute of 2006.

Jesus warned his friends about first impressions.听 He said that although people might come in sheep鈥檚 clothing, yet they can be like ferocious wolves.听 The only way to judge them, he taught, is by the fruit of their lives - what happens over the longer term.

Over the longer term working together, and then again during the service on Monday, I saw and heard what the real fruit of my colleague鈥檚 life was, in the friendships she made, in the work she did and the family she loved.

They say that first impressions are the ones that count, but I鈥檓 pretty sure that鈥檚 not true. With her, the first impression was all wrong and I reckon that Jesus was right: if you want to know someone, see what fruit their life produces.听 To do that takes time, and a little effort.听 But one of the things I learned from my colleague Cynthia is that it鈥檚 definitely worth it.