A few weeks back, as I sat in my office chair, staring at the rain fall on the streets seven stories below me, it hit me like a gust of wind. I am small. My place in God’s story is so minute. As I did my daily tasks, I sat there and thought about how many people live a daily life that is enormously similar to mine. I get up, rush out the door, commute to work, work my eight to nine hour day, commute home, go to the gym, and hopefully have dinner ready before my 7:00 pm evening shows. I am one of many that do the same things, day in and day out, repeatedly. On the contrast, the homeless guy on the corner, or the artist living in a loft in Paris, or the nightshift doctor in China…their lives are so vastly different from mine. It is something that seems subsequently small, the differences of lifestyles; yet it takes a lot out of me to make it truly comprehensible. Take a moment and think about what your spouse or best friend doing, what he or she is thinking, what they are wearing, if they are singing in a car or the shower. On the outside, their life may look very similar to yours, but in this moment, and every moment, their life is so individual and uniquely theirs. The whole concept blew me away on that afternoon.
I find myself feeling so grateful for God's glory for reasons as simple as that. He knows where I am at, what I am wearing, thinking, and doing in one specific moment. At the same time, for every individual moment, he knows where each person is, what they are wearing, thinking, and doing. Each person that is being touched by a rain drop; each person that is driving with the same clear water pellets being whipped away with windshield wipers; each person that is shedding a tear that is oh-so-similar to the rain drops. I wish I could focus on more than one thing when I process all of this; however, I cannot fathom thinking about such an intricate detail in unison to another, especially when it is a detail of somebody else’s life. I think about those individuals that are working downtown in the city, those that are screaming in a court room, those crying tears of happiness for a new birth in the ICU, and those that are protesting, looting, and rioting in the streets of our suburbs out of confusion, hurt, and pain.
I wish I could sit down with them for a coffee or a beer, and tell them how much God knows them and loves them, individually. From the person holding the bundle of joy to the person that tweeting words of hate and sorrow, God is paying attention to you and your actions and cares about you. He knows that the sun is shining five miles away and that it is snowing across the world. He is helping the mother find water in the dry lands of the Middle East. He is soothing a child awoken in the middle of the night in He is holding the grandmother that is weeping in roughest part of the inner city neighborhood. And He is doing this all at the same time, with the same love for all. It is amazing and it makes me feel extraordinarily special, but small.
Some days, like today, with all of the chaos in my city, it feels good to remind myself how small I am, and the love to go around. And if I did not necessarily explain myself well, because they are just my words...I invite you to listen to a greater communicator of God's word. Just a clip, 9 minutes...heck, just listen to the first three minutes.
