Are you ever blown away by how big the world is? Ever been in awe of how many people are on it, and how we know so little about them? Sometimes it catches me by surprise when I'm in Target and I hear bits and pieces of strangers' conversations. I'm hearing bits and pieces of a life that outside of the Target is whole, and yet wholly unknown to me. The faces that I'll never see, the voices I'll never hear, and the thoughts that will never be expressed to me number in the billions. In this way, I feel so incredibly...small.
I have a friend who lives in Guangzhou (Southern China) and we were playing Words With Friends online, as we often do, and we use the chat function in there to talk smack and to just generally catch up. So, we recently had this conversation in chat:
Me: I've decided I really like Birdy. I mean, she has mad skills. (yes I said "mad skills"...I was born in the 80s)
Cons: I do too!!! Now listening to her album in repeat
I was blown away by that. Because in that moment...I was doing the exact same thing! Listening to Birdy on repeat. Loving every song, imagining myself making photo montages to her music (because I'm a nerd).
Big whoop, who cares, so what?
Well, I don't know exactly. I just know that right then I felt really connected. Cons felt close even though she's far away. She felt close, and she's thousands of miles away. Where she is...it's like tomorrow. Isn't that amazing?! We don't even live in the same day, and she felt closer to me than the man who sits in the office across from mine...just because of a song.
This past weekend I engaged in something I have never done before: street evangelism. It was rough and part of it was because the people on the street felt far away even though they were walking right past me. I'm on the street, trying to share the gospel of Jesus Christ with someone who, though within touching distance, is thousands of miles away...in my mind. No shared experience. I was a failure out there, I'm not ashamed to say. No one had a "come to Jesus" moment on account of me. At least, not that I saw. But I had a moment. I had a revelation: my shared experience has to be more. I'm not saying I have to live their life, but I have to see their life. I have to be like Paul:
To those not having the law I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law), so as to win those not having the law. To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some. I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings. - 1 Corinthians 9:21-23
Shared experience. He made himself connected.
To be ALL things, to ALL people, just to save SOME. That is an amazing concept. I have to be a lot, to get a little. This is crazy, especially in light of the billions of faces, voices, and thoughts that I don't know about. But you know what...if someone on the other side of tomorrow can happen to be listening to the exact same music as me in the exact same moment...I know there is some way for me to connect. I just have to pray for it, I just have to reach for it, I just have to be open to it.
I want to connect.
Thoughts?
For all those who are not hip to Birdy, check her out, she does covers. Which is cool, because I love covers so much I wrote a blog about them not too long ago (click here for Covers blog). Click below for Birdy :)
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