What Good Is It?

Can I be honest?

I’ve been pretty discouraged lately.

Or, more specifically, discouraged with how technology has changed us.

Yesterday, I was in a waiting room and it hit me like it does every time—we don’t talk to each other anymore.

Twenty heads bent down looking at their screens.

If conversation is initiated on a bus or train, in the airport, or at the grocery store, it’s often looked at as crazy.

But isn’t it more crazy to keep our eyes fixed to the blue light, often with white things dangling from our ears, than to talk with people beside us?

Weren’t we put on this earth to connect?

To love God and to love others?

How can we love or connect if we aren’t making eye-contact?

After my appointment, I was driving home and the crosswalk before me flashed. I stopped far back for the older couple who had pressed the button. When they started arm and arm across the road, the woman was being assisted by the man, but she slipped from his hold and tumbled hard onto the pavement.

I gasped and quickly parked. Others ran over to them too.

The sweet woman was wailing and holding her arm. It looked broken but once she calmed, she explained that the large, swollen spot was from recent elbow surgery after a previous fall. She was bleeding from a scrape over that injury and was shaking. Her husband asked if I would stay while he went to get their vehicle. She cried more when he left. I told her how wonderful her husband was, which caused head nodding and a momentary smile.

I teared up also—feeling her pain and fear. I prayed with her before he brought the car, helped her get inside, and drove away.

Maybe God sometimes allows upsetting things to happen right before our eyes because our eyes sometimes need upending?

Maybe we need adrenaline running through our veins to recognize how much we take for granted and how life can sometimes be changed in the matter of a single step.

Maybe sometimes we need an urgent situation to see that those we encounter outside our homes may potentially be friends in strangers’ clothes.

Because what good is it if we send money to reach kids across the globe but don’t reach out to those living across the street?

What good is it if we listen to podcasts telling us how to change the world but don’t change our mouths to smile at the people of the world walking next to us in the aisles?

What good is it if we converse with ones we don’t know online but won’t talk with ones we don’t know sitting nearby?

How can we come together if we don’t come together?

What good are the mutual moments of our human lives if we behave like we’re invisible and treat others as if they are too?

What good is it if we don’t lift our heads and open our hearts … to God’s goodness in the souls He places all around?

Romans 12:10 Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves.