February 27, 2010

It's the Little Things

I like to eat chicken taquitos with ranch.

I just got a new little sister, named Caelyn, adopted from China, a little over a month ago.

I've been writing a novel for years, but have to keep restarting it.

I love poetry.

I like to have lighthearted arguments with people.

There's a lot of little things about me that you might, or might not, know. Just as there are for every other human being out there. And you know what? It's those same little things that mean you know someone, those little factoids, hidden away behind the eyes. And everyone has them. Every time you meet somebody new, you find out some of their "little things." You get to know them.

If you love someone, then it is the little things that you love (or sometimes hate) about them.

God loves all of us.

Behind every vacant face at the grocery store, in the mind of every guy who talks in the movie theater, buried in the heart of every celebrity, deep inside each member of the family at Sunday lunch, there are these facts that, when taken all together, make each of us unique. They set us apart, more so than the subtle differences in our features, or the varieties in body weights.

My point is, if you never get to know someone, you never find out those things. But that doesn't mean they don't exist. So often we treat others, we treat strangers, as if they're just there. Not as if they are complex human beings, with a soul and a perspective, but as if they are just another unknown face in this tumultuous world. But God knows all those little things, already, about each and every one of us. And He loves each of us all the more for (and sometimes, despite) them. He created each of us, with immaculate care. Yet we act, a lot of the time, as if we and the ones we know are the only ones created by Him. But that's just absolutely untrue.

I've heard people say they love science because, through it, they learn about God's creation. They get to understand and appreciate the depth and intricacy of His grand and perfect designs. But you know what? Every time we get to know someone new, or learn something new about someone we know, we are learning about God's creation, and it's no less deep or intricate than gravity. Even more so, I would say.

Isn't that weird? With that in mind, shouldn't I not only put up with meeting new people, but enjoy it? Appreciate it and them for what they are? Non-Christians were made by God, you know. Homosexuals were made by God. Even the rude person behind the fast-food counter was made by Him.

And think about the implications of this in the way we should witness, in our often misguided motivations for doing so...

Yet I don't act that way.

I am the hypocrite.

Forgive me, Abba Yahweh, and help me to see the glory of your creation in all of those around me.

1 comments:

jnash said...

Wow this is just so true. I often marvel at the fact that there are so many millions of tiny details and quirks and characteristics of the random people I see every day yet have never spoken too. It is like walking around a billion different epic novels whose pages are never cracked. You get in the habit of thinking such people do not, in fact, have such unique characteristics. You get to think of them as simply mindless humanoid shells walking around performing mundane and useless tasks. How silly! But to think of each and every person as an equally unique created being would be to admit how little we really understand about the world around us...