because they are significant too
On the 45 minute drive from my small hometown to the bigger city in which we attended church you passed through places so small only the ones in the area knew their names.
The same thing was true on my drives from college to back home. The moment the interstate was behind you and state highways lined by trees took over, you would see single houses with no neighbors to be seen, small communities with a drugstore and gas station as the only proof of economy, until you reached the one booming--and I use that term lightly--metropolis that boasts the restaurants and movie theater before driving back again through the forest lined roads waiting for the sign that told you were just 10 miles away.
This is how the majority of towns go here in our united states. Unless you are in bold and all caps on the map, or one of the places written on the green signs that line our interstates, a magnifying glass is needed to make out the letters that tell your name.
My parents love of travel, yet fear of flying, meant many hours of my childhood were spent in the car watching cement and billboards switch to trees or fields or farm lands with a house popping up every little bit along the way. "What do they do here?" my mind would wonder. "Why here, in the middle of nowhere?" Before long, a narrative would begin to create itself as imagination took over and tried to create the reasons, the desire, the life that would unfold in the places we passed.
Some things have changed since childhood became adulthood. I have no fear of flying, well no fear big enough to keep me from doing it, but even on the other side of the country with a husband who loves driving and has a fondness for scenic roads, there are still ample opportunities to see the wide open spaces unencumbered by metropolis that have the space between them to breathe. Now, as I see the spots outside my window there is a different heart behind those same questions. "Why," I long to know, "did they choose to live here, and what is it that they do." I want to know the story, the history behind their choices to be where they are planted. The most important, however, is if they see themselves as just a speck or do they know their significance?
We each were created to be personally known and loved and we each deserve, because of the divine intention each life was created with, to know that we are anything but insignificant but thought and realization cannot stop there because as we keep that truth about ourselves, as we look at another, we must remember that so is theirs.
First, we need see our own significance through Christ. We must see our identity as fully embedded in Him, Holy and Dearly loved (Col 3:12) and completely hidden in Christ (Col 3:3). But once that is done, once we understand who we are because of whose we are, our eyes must glance to those around and see the individual significance of the ones next to us. The ones down the street. The ones in another country. The ones in the middle of nowhere.
Dr. Seuss (Theodore Geisel) brought this idea to life in one of his beloved children's books Horton Hears a Who! in the 50s. The book's main theme, "a person's a person no matter how small", was his reaction to his visit to Japan, where the importance of the individual was an exciting new concept. Geisel who had harbored strong anti-Japan sentiments before and during World War II changed his views dramatically after the war and used this book as an allegory for the American post-war occupation of the country.
In both this book, turned movie, and the opening scene of another Dr. Seuss classic turned movie, How the Grinch Stole Christmas we see a large and active community of Whos that do the same things we do. They have families, work jobs, argue, celebrate holidays, love, and forgive; they just happened to do it all in the context of a little speck on a clover--or a snowflake as conveyed in the winter. They, in this little speck ignored by everyone except an elephant with superb hearing, live a life of significance, and the entire story is meant to have that one animal fight for them even when no one else believes they exist or don't care enough to try and see.
We, if we are believers, is where this has to start. We claim to believe that we, as sinners who deserve death, were looked upon with grace and mercy and given life through Christ, not because of anything we have done but because of everything He did. If we could do nothing to earn His love, why do we insist on making other people jump through hoops to earn ours, or worse, feel as if they are not even worthy of it to begin with. None of us is worthy, all of us have fallen short, we are all beggars in need of a hand up to Hope.
You have a choice on how to view another. You can lump them all together into the mental groups you have created, like the cliques we all know existed in high school and sometimes still carried into adulthood. Or, you can separate each face, each image bearer of God, and strive to see that each are lovingly created and divinely placed to work as individually and as a body, strive to see that each are quite beautifully significant.
God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. Genesis 1:26-27
As I remember this year, remember His faithfulness, His Truths, His Promises, I must also remember that every word He spoke for me, He also spoke for you, for them, for those, and I want, no, I LONG for it to be seen and known and taken to the inner most parts of their dispositions, each and every one, and cause us each to shine.
I'm praying for you, pray for me.