Sometimes we don't see the pain
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Read More Upward Glances
On my way to work this morning, I was considering the content for a fantastic and informative column. I was considering the evidence from the Bible and the world we live in and how to present it. I was constructing nuanced arguments in my head. I was looking in my rearview mirror at a stoplight. I rarely pay more attention to the cars around me than I need to avoid hitting them, but this time I did.
Behind me was a truck. I took a break from my own internal, grandiose pontifications to admire the truck and compare it to my own. There is a materialist it every one of us. Then, I noticed the driver. He was obviously upset. His face was a little red. His hands, taking the break from the driving task offered by the red light, were waving around emphatically. His mouth opened wide to make every word, and I knew he was yelling. Until this point, he had been looking forward. Then his head turned to the side and his gaze directed my attention to his passenger.
She was crying.
I don't know what had happened. I don't know if he was being a jerk or if she had done something really that despicable, or both. I do know two very hurt people occupied the cab of the truck behind me, and my heart broke a little bit. Her crying hurt him, so he yelled louder. His yelling hurt her, so she cried harder. I began to pray as I watched. I began to feel helpless at the realization that nothing I did could make any of that better.
As I kept watching, the man looked back up and laid on his horn. The light had turned green, I pressed the gas a little harder than I meant to because I was embarrassed and they returned to their argument as I returned to my thoughts.
I wondered how often we miss the person crying in the next car over. My job is to walk with people who are hurting, and yet this morning I became convinced that I drive past hurting people all the time on my way to my job at a church. I'm the Levite who walks by the man who's been beaten and robbed — except the Levite was at least honest enough to acknowledge that someone was hurt and cross over to the other side of the road. Instead, I didn't even realize someone was hurt until this morning. Who will be that couple's Samaritan?
Then, I remember what God says.
In Acts 1:8, Jesus gives his disciples parting instructions. From just outside Jerusalem's walls, Jesus commanded them to be his witnesses, "in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth." It wasn't until the church had done a good job of reaching Jerusalem that God allowed circumstances which forced the church to go to the rest of Judea and Samaria.
The Bible offers a tension between thinking globally and thinking locally. The gospel — the fact of Jesus' death for sin and resurrection to provide eternal life, and the resulting peace with God and each other which he offers — is the solution for the whole world, but it's also the solution for the hurting couple behind me at the stoplight. I didn't have the opportunity to share the gospel with them. If the driver didn't appreciate my failure to notice the green light, I doubt he would have tolerated a knock on his window. I recognize the practical limitations in life. But I prayed that you might have the opportunity.
God has not put you in this city by accident. He has not filled your life with the people you know through coincidence. You and I might not have national or international influence, but we do have influence exactly where God has placed us.
I am convinced the single factor that prevents us from playing that role is our failure to look up. We get so consumed with our own needs and our own goals and our own column and our own tardiness to work that we fail to see the hurting people just feet away. At least I do. Jesus said that the second-greatest commandment is to "love your neighbor as yourself" (Luke 10:27) right before he told the parable of the good Samaritan. It seems that before we can love our neighbors, we have to see them.