So I was looking at a group picture, and I thought of something.
Do you ever have those moments where you’re not really thinking about much at all, and then you see something totally ordinary that you’ve seen several times before, but this time it inspires some oddly inspiring thought that is just as profound as it is obvious? And then you sort of wonder why you never thought of it before?
Yeah. This was one of those moments.
The picture in question was of about 30 people or so (myself included), a mixture of adults and children all posed and pleasant looking, smiling at the camera; a picture taken at the end of church camp about a week and a half ago, although it feels longer. Church camp has a way of setting itself apart from the usual span of time, I think…you start to think that it’s everyday stuff to have eleven year olds hopped up on sweet tea as your breakfast/lunch/dinner companions and to dance around to silly camp songs even though you’re well past the silly-camp-song age; after doing all this for a week or so you sort of forget that the real world doesn’t include that kind of stuff. It becomes a memory so quickly that it feels like forever ago even if it just happened a couple weeks ago.
But that’s not the point, and not the profound thought. That’s just some other thought that ended up having some mild profundity involved.
The point is that at some point in the week, all thirty of us made it a point to all put on the same bright red t-shirt, lined ourselves up in rows, and take a picture, so that back in the real world we can all look at that picture from time to time and say to ourselves, “Hey, that sure was a crazy week, wasn’t it?”
And that’s what I generally thought when I looked at that picture. But this time I saw it, I had a whole other thought.
“Who are these people? And how in the world did I end up in this picture with them?”
Now I don’t mean that on a simple sense…because, simply speaking, these are coworkers and churchgoers and children from the church where I’m working this summer, and the reason I’m in the picture with them is naturally because I was a counselor for the week and people take pictures of such things. But that’s not what I mean.
Working at church camp, you get to know the kids (if you’re a good counselor, at least). And as I was glancing at this picture, my eyes happened to fall on a camper who I knew had a particularly sad past and difficult story. But there she was in the picture, smiling and looking pretty much the same as all the rest of us. And then, as I glanced through the rest of the picture, it just kind of hit me that everyone in the picture had a story: had their own past, their own struggles, their own ideas about the world, their own ideas about God, their own everything, really. I don’t really know where most of these kids come from, and I clearly have no idea where they’re going. But there we all are. It was like lines were shooting out of every kid and off the screen, a bunch of 3-D timelines telling life stories that I only knew the surface of, a bunch of different life paths that happened to converge at this one place this one time in the basement of this one lodge of this one retreat center in this one forest in this one region of this one state of this one country of this one continent in this one world.
Whoa.
I think that a lot of the times when I look at group pictures, my eyes naturally gravitate to me. You know, I’m familiar with me, so I’m relatively easy for me to spot. And I might think something along the lines of “hmm, not a good hair moment” or something equally self-centered, and then flip on to the next photo that so-and-so tagged of me from such-and-such a recent adventure that was deemed worthy of a Facebook album.
But there are 30 other people in that picture. How in the world can I only focus on me?
But we do that, right? We all do.
We all kind of just focus on ourselves, bopping along on our own little timelines. And more often than not, we tend to think about how other people bump into OUR timeline and how they affect US, instead of stopping to think that maybe we’re the one who bumped into their timelines. We get so caught up in how other people are affecting our lives that we forget that we are equally affecting theirs.
It’s like a car accident. Each person in each car will tell you that the other person hit THEM, but bystanders will say that two cars hit EACH OTHER.
We’re so self-centered. We don’t always see how we’re affecting people, but we can see clearly how other people are getting in our way, or (if we’re lucky) how other people are helping us out. It’s too bad, really, because I think God probably causes these timeline intersections for a reason…it’s too bad that we’re not usually paying attention, you know?
What’s even weirder about that picture I was telling you about is the ridiculous number of things that had to happen in my life to get me there. How I wouldn’t have known about this internship if my Dad hadn’t happened across a posting for it at work and forwarded it to me. And how I wouldn’t have accepted it if I hadn’t first turned down the opportunity to spend a year doing missions work in Europe in favor of going to seminary in the fall (an option that would have kept me in St. Louis raising support all summer). And really, how I wouldn’t have thought that a church internship sounded interesting at all if my life hadn’t intersected with the lives of a few key friends back in my freshman year of college who got me back on track with God. And how I wouldn’t have met those friends if I hadn’t gone through recruitment on a whim and pledged AOII, and started going to Cru with the girls I met. And how even then, I might not have ended up as close with one of those key friends if we hadn’t happened to be placed in this random Asian Art History class that one of the student leaders of Cru also happened to be in. And how none of that would have happened at all if I hadn’t wound up at Transylvania. And how I would never have gone to Transylvania if I hadn’t gotten rejected by the school I’d applied to early-decision (and how one of those key friends had the same story). And how I wouldn’t even have considered Transylvania if we hadn’t happened to see a sign for it as we were happening to drive through Lexington because my Dad happened to have to take a test at the seminary he’d been taking online classes at, which, oh yeah, happened to be just 30 minutes down the road from the place where God would work miracles in my life over the span of a 4-year education.
A lot had to happen for me to end up in this group picture. A lot of intersections to get to this one intersection in the woods of northern Missouri, frozen in the form of a lot of smiling faces popping out of a lot of bright red t-shirts.
I wonder what sort of intersections everyone else had to cross to get there, you know? And I wonder why, in God’s grand and overwhelming plan of all of human existence, He had to get us there together.
Because you know He had a reason.
Maybe that’s how we should think about interactions with people. As planned occurrences and opportunities for awesome things to occur…or as do-or-die interactions that might just end up changing the course of someone’s life entirely, so vital to God’s plan that He HAD to get you or me and that other random person together for some amount of time. Because that meeting, that intersection, was
just
that
important.
So what do you think? Do you think that your life has an effect on other people? Do you think that our friendship, or the fact that we’re friendly enough to be Facebook friends, has some sort of reasoning behind it? Do you think there was a point to our meeting when we did, and our parting when we did? Do you think there’s a reason some doors open while others close, a reason why some friends last forever and some fade into memories of the past? How will our meeting, our interaction, affect the rest of our lives, and how will the interactions we have today, tomorrow, and the next day affect the rest of the world?
Kind of makes you look at group pictures differently…
Do you ever have those moments where you’re not really thinking about much at all, and then you see something totally ordinary that you’ve seen several times before, but this time it inspires some oddly inspiring thought that is just as profound as it is obvious? And then you sort of wonder why you never thought of it before?
Yeah. This was one of those moments.
The picture in question was of about 30 people or so (myself included), a mixture of adults and children all posed and pleasant looking, smiling at the camera; a picture taken at the end of church camp about a week and a half ago, although it feels longer. Church camp has a way of setting itself apart from the usual span of time, I think…you start to think that it’s everyday stuff to have eleven year olds hopped up on sweet tea as your breakfast/lunch/dinner companions and to dance around to silly camp songs even though you’re well past the silly-camp-song age; after doing all this for a week or so you sort of forget that the real world doesn’t include that kind of stuff. It becomes a memory so quickly that it feels like forever ago even if it just happened a couple weeks ago.
But that’s not the point, and not the profound thought. That’s just some other thought that ended up having some mild profundity involved.
The point is that at some point in the week, all thirty of us made it a point to all put on the same bright red t-shirt, lined ourselves up in rows, and take a picture, so that back in the real world we can all look at that picture from time to time and say to ourselves, “Hey, that sure was a crazy week, wasn’t it?”
And that’s what I generally thought when I looked at that picture. But this time I saw it, I had a whole other thought.
“Who are these people? And how in the world did I end up in this picture with them?”
Now I don’t mean that on a simple sense…because, simply speaking, these are coworkers and churchgoers and children from the church where I’m working this summer, and the reason I’m in the picture with them is naturally because I was a counselor for the week and people take pictures of such things. But that’s not what I mean.
Working at church camp, you get to know the kids (if you’re a good counselor, at least). And as I was glancing at this picture, my eyes happened to fall on a camper who I knew had a particularly sad past and difficult story. But there she was in the picture, smiling and looking pretty much the same as all the rest of us. And then, as I glanced through the rest of the picture, it just kind of hit me that everyone in the picture had a story: had their own past, their own struggles, their own ideas about the world, their own ideas about God, their own everything, really. I don’t really know where most of these kids come from, and I clearly have no idea where they’re going. But there we all are. It was like lines were shooting out of every kid and off the screen, a bunch of 3-D timelines telling life stories that I only knew the surface of, a bunch of different life paths that happened to converge at this one place this one time in the basement of this one lodge of this one retreat center in this one forest in this one region of this one state of this one country of this one continent in this one world.
Whoa.
I think that a lot of the times when I look at group pictures, my eyes naturally gravitate to me. You know, I’m familiar with me, so I’m relatively easy for me to spot. And I might think something along the lines of “hmm, not a good hair moment” or something equally self-centered, and then flip on to the next photo that so-and-so tagged of me from such-and-such a recent adventure that was deemed worthy of a Facebook album.
But there are 30 other people in that picture. How in the world can I only focus on me?
But we do that, right? We all do.
We all kind of just focus on ourselves, bopping along on our own little timelines. And more often than not, we tend to think about how other people bump into OUR timeline and how they affect US, instead of stopping to think that maybe we’re the one who bumped into their timelines. We get so caught up in how other people are affecting our lives that we forget that we are equally affecting theirs.
It’s like a car accident. Each person in each car will tell you that the other person hit THEM, but bystanders will say that two cars hit EACH OTHER.
We’re so self-centered. We don’t always see how we’re affecting people, but we can see clearly how other people are getting in our way, or (if we’re lucky) how other people are helping us out. It’s too bad, really, because I think God probably causes these timeline intersections for a reason…it’s too bad that we’re not usually paying attention, you know?
What’s even weirder about that picture I was telling you about is the ridiculous number of things that had to happen in my life to get me there. How I wouldn’t have known about this internship if my Dad hadn’t happened across a posting for it at work and forwarded it to me. And how I wouldn’t have accepted it if I hadn’t first turned down the opportunity to spend a year doing missions work in Europe in favor of going to seminary in the fall (an option that would have kept me in St. Louis raising support all summer). And really, how I wouldn’t have thought that a church internship sounded interesting at all if my life hadn’t intersected with the lives of a few key friends back in my freshman year of college who got me back on track with God. And how I wouldn’t have met those friends if I hadn’t gone through recruitment on a whim and pledged AOII, and started going to Cru with the girls I met. And how even then, I might not have ended up as close with one of those key friends if we hadn’t happened to be placed in this random Asian Art History class that one of the student leaders of Cru also happened to be in. And how none of that would have happened at all if I hadn’t wound up at Transylvania. And how I would never have gone to Transylvania if I hadn’t gotten rejected by the school I’d applied to early-decision (and how one of those key friends had the same story). And how I wouldn’t even have considered Transylvania if we hadn’t happened to see a sign for it as we were happening to drive through Lexington because my Dad happened to have to take a test at the seminary he’d been taking online classes at, which, oh yeah, happened to be just 30 minutes down the road from the place where God would work miracles in my life over the span of a 4-year education.
A lot had to happen for me to end up in this group picture. A lot of intersections to get to this one intersection in the woods of northern Missouri, frozen in the form of a lot of smiling faces popping out of a lot of bright red t-shirts.
I wonder what sort of intersections everyone else had to cross to get there, you know? And I wonder why, in God’s grand and overwhelming plan of all of human existence, He had to get us there together.
Because you know He had a reason.
Maybe that’s how we should think about interactions with people. As planned occurrences and opportunities for awesome things to occur…or as do-or-die interactions that might just end up changing the course of someone’s life entirely, so vital to God’s plan that He HAD to get you or me and that other random person together for some amount of time. Because that meeting, that intersection, was
just
that
important.
So what do you think? Do you think that your life has an effect on other people? Do you think that our friendship, or the fact that we’re friendly enough to be Facebook friends, has some sort of reasoning behind it? Do you think there was a point to our meeting when we did, and our parting when we did? Do you think there’s a reason some doors open while others close, a reason why some friends last forever and some fade into memories of the past? How will our meeting, our interaction, affect the rest of our lives, and how will the interactions we have today, tomorrow, and the next day affect the rest of the world?
Kind of makes you look at group pictures differently…
Hi! So, I'm a random blog visitor and I found your blog. I absolutely LOVE it! I think that you are so silly and interesting and you seem like you have a good heart. This is what I liked about this post. I really loved this sentence: "It was like lines were shooting out of every kid and off the screen, a bunch of 3-D timelines telling life stories that I only knew the surface of, a bunch of different life paths that happened to converge at this one place this one time in the basement of this one lodge of this one retreat center in this one forest in this one region of this one state of this one country of this one continent in this one world." I liked it because it sounded really profound. The 3D comparison was very compelling. I like to think that everything happens for a reason. But I guess I don't think about why that happens and what it means. Especially in relations to others. So thanks for writing that. I like the picture. Which one is the kid who likes Jacob?...little bugger.
ReplyDeleteThanks, random blogger!
ReplyDeleteAnd the self-proclaimed team Jacob member is third from the right in the second row.