Meeting unexpected people:

Last year I started helping keep books for away basketball games. I really enjoy doing this. One person I have met through this experience is a man who also keeps book at home games for a school in our conference. He is now a person I really enjoy talking to.   This also reminds me of my mom who works as a waitress and will often make good relationships with those that she serves on a regular basis.  I know many others who work in the service industry will also have a favorite customer that comes in regularly.  Sometimes, we meet the best people in the most unexpected situations.   

This made me realize how often in life we can choose to shut others out. With our phones and other electronic devices, it can be so much easier to ignore everyone else. However, I have found that there can be really great moments when we do take the time to get to talk to those around us.  Yes, there are videos that really make me laugh, and yes, I can have some good conversations with those on social media.  However, it does not even compare to real-life laughter and real-life conversations with the human people in our world.  

This is all a good reminder of the verse, Genesis 1:27 which says, “So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.”  The Lord has created each person, and I do mean every person, in his own image.  There are many times that I will go through my life, not necessarily looking at every person as God’s image.  I will sometimes look at people in the streets, a part of a crowd, someone I need to work around, coworkers, and rough conversations.  Yes, there are also many people that I look at as friends or as people who I do want to spend time with. However, do I really look at these people as images of God, or someone who really needs to be treated like God’s creation? Sadly, I believe there are many times I do not look at people like this.  

Another Bible verse that speaks very well to this is Luke 6:31 or the Golden Rule verse.  It says, “And as you wish others would do to you, do so to them.”  There are times, we have all experienced when we want to be shown extra love.  Maybe, you just had a really hard day, so a stranger on the street giving you a compliment or smiling extra big ends up meaning so much to you. I will always remember the day we had my grandpa’s funeral, and I had to run to some stores for a few supplies on the way home.  The next day I had more professional development training at the school, so I also knew that I needed some supplies for my classroom.  The man who checked me out at one of the stores was incredibly kind.  He smiled real large and was telling me funny jokes.  He made me laugh at a time when I was about to cry.  I looked at him and told him that we just had my grandpa’s funeral that day, and I was happy that he was so kind to me on such a hard day.  To him, this was natural, but for me this was important.  

We do not always know the days that others are having.  We do not know who they just lost or what they just went through, so it is important that we treat them the way that we want to be treated and then some.   If we only treated people the way that we are treated, I highly doubt that the way that we treat others would be the absolute best.  We would most likely have times where we would ignore those around us or maybe even moments where we treat them as an inconvenience.  

One of my future goals is going to be to smile at every single person that I see at the grocery store.  I will try my best to make eye contact with them.  (Obviously, this will not be a weird way or a way that is going to make them uncomfortable.)  The reason that I personally say the grocery store is because I hate going to the grocery store.  I hate taking the time to pick out groceries and think ahead to what items I will need for meals that week.  I don’t hate cooking as much as I used to, but that also could be the other reason for why I don’t love picking out groceries.  For some reason, this provides me with a great amount of anxiety.   I then know that my impatience and my rushing to get out of there is more advanced.  However, there are a lot of people or God’s creation at the grocery store, and therefore I should take the time to care about them.

You do not know the people that you are going to meet.  You do not know the new mentor, the new best friend, the new story that will impact you that you will meet on a regular basis. Because of this, it is important that we as people start looking around to people as creations and images of God as well as treating others even better than we have been treated.  Through this, you will be filling the world with more joy, and you may meet some pretty awesome people.