Marketing Nightmare

In the corporate world I worked in the marketing and art department as the traffic coordinator. I was responsible for working with the writers, marketing managers, graphic designers, engineers and different vendors to keep all the jobs on schedule. We had war room meetings, conference calls, press kits, photo shoots, press releases, press runs and trade shows. Everything was about how our software looked and it's position in the market place. It wasn't even considered odd to have all day meetings just to talk about what font looked best for our literature and boxes. Every detail was looked at with a fine tooth comb to make sure every detail was perfect even down to the placement on the store shelves.

I have been removed from corporate life for a number of years but I can easily slip on my marketing cap and see life through the eyes of the marketing world. While watching television I have often thought to myself, I can't believe a group of people sat around a conference room table for hours to come up with crap like this and got paid for it.

I was laying in bed the other night with both my marketing and thinking caps on, not my preferred sleeping cap. I was thinking about the Deli Mart lady again. I had come to the conclusion she would technically be considered a marketing nightmare on every level. I mean look at her, she is a mess. No one wants to be a tourist and see things like that and wreck a perfectly good mindless vacation. Not to mention she is bad for business and makes the country look bad. On a more personal level, no mother wants to think about her child growing up like that and no child wants her mother to end up like this. And the church, well, we all know no one wants to sit next to her, shake her hand or have her over for lunch. After all what would everyone think? I have never had the guts to stop on Sunday morning and pick her up for church. I am not proud of the fact that I am a chicken, but I can't seem to stop thinking about her.

If you are honest with yourself you would admit at some level you care about how people see you and what they really think. Everyone packages themselves to look better and be more presentable. We market ourselves so that our lives look perfect, our kids act perfect, our ministry is flawless, our marriage is wonderful and our GAP clothes are trendy . I am always amazed to see the number of Haitians who have little money for food spending money to have clothes dry cleaned. It seems to me that the way they look is one of the only things they can be in control of so they spend hours making sure they look perfect.

So what's up with the Deli Mart lady? Here is my media spin on the whole deal. The day I took this picture she had taken off her packaging, her blue dress that was now piled up on top of her head. Her packaging was never discussed in an all day meeting it was pretty simple. She had just finished washing it on the side of the road in the car catcher. Unknowingly presenting the best picture I have ever seen for what can happen to humanity when we don't or won't deal with our sin. Standing in front of me was one of the truest pictures of what our lives apart from Jesus really look like.

Imagine with me if you will, that when you look at her as she is, it is as if you can see she has an entire life time of sin, generation curses, hurt, loneliness and pain saved up in the bags she has tied purposely to her body. She has never taken advantage of the free gift of salvation. Maybe no one ever told her she didn't have to carry all her sin and pain around with her and one day it was finally just too much for her and she stopped marketing herself in what we would consider the proper way. She now hides it all in bags under her blue jean dress thinking no one can see the struggle in her daily walk to sit next to the car catcher at Deli Mart. Just as I assume no one can see my sin as I struggle to walk out my salvation.
That's the funny thing about sin, we never think others can see it because we think we have marketed ourselves so well.