April 13: All the "I"s

It's hard to believe my last blog post was almost a month ago. And while that may appear to mean that I've been acknowledging God less or that he's been around less, that's not completely the case.

Yes, I have done less formal acknowledgement; I have not written much about the ways in which God has been present, but my days have been filled with glimpses of his creation accompanied by my brief "thank you"s and moments of wonder and adoration. God is faithful, always. He continues to remind me of that through the people in my life, the beauty of his creation, the perfection of his ways, his humor, his light, his discipline, his guidance, and oh his love!

In still moments, it is easy to stop and contemplate God's presence in this world and in my life, but when there are social pressures, demanding schedules, and other distractions, it becomes more difficult. I come back to this realization often: rushing through life, through weeks, through days, through hours, even minutes is no way to live, especially with the freedom we've been given through Christ. Rushing causes tunnel vision; it makes it very difficult to see anything but the one thing we're getting to next, which very often has nothing to do with God.

Twice today, I rushed to catch a MARTA train and missed it by a split second BOTH times. Quite literally, the doors of the train closed when I was within 5 strides of the train. Is this God speaking to me? Maybe, maybe not. Does it matter? No. I know the temptation it is for me to focus on getting stuff done rather than spending time with people, at least acknowledging them. It was a wake up call to me, and yes, it did take TWO times for me to "wake up."

Earlier this week, I had a better way of living--looking up (not at my phone, watch, or the ground). My eyes were set on the people around me, and my heart was set on God. The cross of these two led to a meaningful prayer time on the way to my first class.

It is amazing what you'll see if you look at people as "I"s.

I understand that I have a life, a personality, a story. Part of my story is forgetting that the other characters also have their own stories. They are also "I"s. When I saw these people as "I"s, I saw pain, loneliness, stress, fear, as well as happiness, love, friendship. My heart was transformed; this is beauty. I don't know what I was looking at before. These people all around me are God's perfect creations, masterpieces, and they're worth knowing--every one of them.

So thanks for reading my brain/heart dump. Tomorrow is Good Friday, the day when we remember how Jesus sacrificed himself because he saw, he knew, he loved all the "I"s around him--past, present, future(<--that's us!) I think it's about time I start to see the "I"s too.