This past week our students continued in
their series, The Invisibles. This series examines the challenges that many
of us have faced with feeling invisible at certain points of our lives, seeing
others who may be invisible to us right now, and gaining an understanding that
we have never been invisible to God. Each
week includes a discussion question/point that our parents and their students
are encouraged to wrestle through together.
The second week’s discussion question reads as follows, “Who are some people that are consistently
in the background scenery of your everyday life?”
Every day there are people who we walk
past, bump into, or drive by in our cars who are invisible to us. In my life I can think of several people who I
have consistently put in the background of my life. These were people who had a story to tell and
life to share but for whatever reason I simply went past them without a second
thought in my mind.
However, there was one individual who
stands out as the turning point for me noticing people that were in the
background scenery of my life. Before we
moved to Ohio we were serving a church in Georgia and to get almost anywhere
you had to take the interstate. Every
day we would get on and off the ramps to go to our house always seeing the same
homeless man standing on the side of the road asking for money. For several days we drove by ignoring him
completely for whatever reason. I recall
using our children (who were two and three years old at the time), the face
that we were running late, or several other reasons to drive by and ignore
him. However, one day our lives changed
as my wife told me that she knew we needed to stop and help him. We found ourselves going to the gas station
buying him a sandwich and drink and getting a few dollars out of the ATM. We drove back to him and dropped off the
various items and started a discussion with him. I remember that I didn’t catch his name or
really anything about his story because I was so floored that he didn’t ask
what kind of sandwich it was or what we got him to drink. I found myself mulling over the idea that if
I were in his position I would want to know the answers to those questions and
then it happened. I started wrestling
with my own selfish feelings and realized that if I was in his situation I
wouldn’t care what it was either but would rather be thankful for the gift of
any passerby. I realized that own my own
selfish feelings were dictating the way that I was handling this situation and
I have to admit that I felt more than a little embarrassed. I realized that for several days we drove by
this man simply because he was a part of the background scenery of our
lives. I have to admit that this act was
initiated and carried out by my wife, but it caused me to start looking beyond
my own little world.
A second occurrence of noticing those in
the background scenery of our lives happened a few years ago when we were
listening to a friend of ours deliver a sermon series from The Advent Conspiracy. After
hearing his words, we found ourselves revaluating our approach to
Christmas. We realized that there were
several other people around the world who were so much worse off than we were
and God grabbed our hearts to look for more ways to be involved in
missions. This wasn’t a guilt-trip
series but rather a way for us to look at the impact that our small family
could make in so-much-larger world. This
year during our advent season our students will be diving into this study with
the opportunity to make an impact on the world.
You can find more information about this series by watching the video
below.
So who are the people in the background
scenery of your life? Who are the people
that you walk or drive by daily that simply need you to reach out? As Christians, we should be the best at
reaching out to others with the love of Christ, but we often times fall flat or
falter with this. What steps can you
take today to start to remedy this situation in your own life? Maybe it is simply giving a little money to
someone in need or partnering with a charity/organization around the world to
impact the life of someone else.
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