Summer Reflection ~ Who we pass on the roads of life

 

As we are prayerfully pondering our friendships and family and the people we encounter ~ some without really noticing because we are too busy scrolling our smartphone for the latest notifications ~ here is an insightful/inspirational blog post from Seth Godin.  Godin writes,

 

Last week, I passed 800 people as I walked my way through New York.

I decided to look at the folks I was walking near.

Of those 800 people, not one was as conventionally attractive as a movie star. Few looked like the images I saw on the billboards I passed. Most wouldn’t be cast in a commercial. Perhaps 40 went to a famous college, maybe 10 played competitive sports. All of them were kinder and wiser than the typical TV character and cared very much about something important.

They were older and younger than the average ‘target market’ for most products. Some carried canes, wore glasses, or had hearing aids. A few were in wheelchairs. A bunch could run far faster than I can, and every one of them knew about things I’ve never even thought about.

If we zoom out and imagine passing 800 randomly chosen people from around the world, we see even more of what it means to be on this planet. Of those 800, fewer than 300 have ever been on an airplane. Half are smarter than average. 200 speak a little English. 50 make just a few dollars a day. Four or five live in bondage. Very few of them have as big an impact on the climate as you and I, and more than 600 of them are very concerned about what’s happening to the world around us.

For a long time, scaled consumer marketing has created status roles where none used to exist, and amplified division and class as a way to create insufficiency and generate sales.

But what we see when we look at the media or at a stack of resumes doesn’t accurately represent the world as it is.

We are all weird, and that’s okay.

 

I love that last line, “We are all weird”.  We are all uniquely and beautifully made AND we all share 99% of the same DNA.  Hold that tension.  We are the same AND different.  We are diverse and intimately interconnected.  Continue to consider some of the friends and family in your life. 

 

Who makes your heart sing?

Who makes you laugh?

Who can you talk for hours with day after day?

Who can you call, and even though you hadn’t spoken in six months, you pick up right where you left off?

Who annoys you, pushes the nuclear codes of your emotions, and causes the tiny vein in your neck to pulse?

Who do you prefer to slam shut the door of your life in the face of (as Peter could have done to Cornelius’ entourage)?

Who do you not notice because their face is a blur amid the busyness of our life?

 

Continue to consider prayerfully the ways your life is connected to others in the world.  May the above questions awaken you to God’s movement this day.