What Do You Know Of Your Fellow Humans?

You have contact with a lot of people. Work, school, church, friends, neighbors, relatives. Do you have any idea who they really are? What they’ve experienced? What sort of saddness, pain or tragedy they’re endured? Can you tell me what their childhood was like? What they love and hate? Who the care for? What they’ve dreamed of? They’re basically strangers, aren’t they?

Most people avoid any deep involvement with others, even close friends and family. You might see someone every day at work for thirty years, and never find out they were beaten or raped when they were young. Probably will never hear how much they cried when their first pet died, who the first person they kissed was. They’re a name and a face, maybe an address and a phone number. When you’re together, you talk about the weather, sports, hobbies, kids, the news. You probably gossip about other people too, just like they gossip about you!

You’re either very lucky or unlucky that you don’t interact with me on a regular basis, because I’m pretty snoopy and adept at getting people to open up and spill their guts to me. I once got a girl to tell me, on the second date, that she had been raped when she was in high school. She cried, and I held and cuddled her too.,if you’re concerned that I’m an a-hole. I like to squish around inside people, and I’m not shy about spilling my innards either!

Look, you have the choice in life to live shallow, or go deep. I’ve loved friends that confessed all sorts of wicked and shameful things to me. If you want the deep relationships, want to love like I believe God would want you to, you need to be tough enough to handle the dirt that most of us accumulate in living. Having a teary person admit the things that they’re ashamed of is great for them, and it forces you to rise up and not be a heel. Being that intensely honest builds trust, when you both do it. Have you got the will and the spine for that, or are you happy just being a name and number in someones cell phone?

Jack