A wonderful challenge to the church is always to see the people. I really believe that we suffer from missing the opportunity to encourage the family by seeing faceless ones at every turn. We see, eyes dart away, and our feet keep moving. We just passed a significant, important, God-created person.
Francis Schaeffer spelled it out when he wrote, One of the problems with humanists is that they tend to "love" humanity as a whole---Man with a capital M, Man as and idea---but forget about man as an individual, as a person. Christianity is to be exactly the opposite. Christianity is not to love in abstraction, but to love the individual who stands before me in a person-to-person relationship. He must never be faceless to me or I am denying everything I say I believe.
It is a right goal that for every encounter we may have with a face, we must work at noticing it is a person who needs our loving affirmation. This doesn't require rocket science. For starters, it just needs a Hello or Thank you or Good morning.
When you see people realize it is an opportunity to see....people.
1 comment:
Ouch, Terry...you are very convicting today!
I'm slightly on the introverted side, so loving "people" is easier than loving a person.
I'd rather give a smile than a conversation sometimes.
But, the point is a good one!
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