La Difference

Today on the tram as I watched people enter and exit I got to thinking about the huge difference between the lives that we all live as humans. Environment, world view, experience, background, it all comes together to make our lives so different from one another.

Today I got together with a girl who's sixteen, who loves Spanish films and to hang out with her friends. She also happens to be married, pregnant with her second child, and Romani, a people group we know as a Gypsy. She spends her days begging on the streets and taking care of her one year old daughter. There's a whole array of people that you'll run into on the street of France. Almost every night on the streets here I see some forlorn drunk stumbling around, and I wonder what are the million words, steps and memories that have turned them into the person they are today.

Even under our own noses, the people we pass each day have seen a different world, a different universe than the one we know ourselves. When you were celebrating your 13th birthday there was someone who was getting sold into slavery. When I was loosing my close friend to a DUI accident there was someone who just found out they were finally pregnant. The world is a strange place filled with over 7 billion people going two times as many directions.

I suppose that's why I'm little too enthralled with fiction and imagination. The world shifts gears, the colors change hues and the soundtrack switches rythym when we step into another person's shoes. The world can be seen through the eyes of a well-known movie star squinting in the glare of camera flashes or in the dimness seen through the eyes of a slave in America who almost no one knows exisits. Does anyone care?

How crazy is it to think that there's one who understands, who sees through and just plain gets every person who's out there in that big, little world. The words "God understands" has become so cliche, but let's take a moment to look for the truth behind the Hallmark card. We have a man who came down to earth, was covered in dirt, sweat and the rejection of this earth so that He could look into the eyes of every man, woman and child and let them know, "I get you".

There are a million things that we as humans will never be able to understand in this life, and that's okay. I'll never be able to understand the life and world of that gypsy girl, but heck, who knows if I'll ever be able to understand my own! But really, I don't care. Because right now there's someone who's eyes I'm looking into who's telling me, "I get you. I know who you are, I see where you're at and I care." Let's leave it at that.