HOW DO YOU “SEE” OTHERS?
Do you actually “see” people when you look at them? And “how” do you see them when you look at them? The ladies at my church just started a study by Christine Caine called 20/20…seen.chosen.sent. Our first meeting was Sunday night. The video was about how we see others. Looking and seeing are not the same. It talked about us starting to look through new lenses…to see what it looks like to actually see people. We, as humans, walk by people everyday and look at them. How do we look at them? How do they look at us? Have you ever looked through someone or them look through you? How did that make you feel? I know that the times it’s happened to me in my life, it made me feel insignificant or unimportant. Sadly, we live in a very self absorbed world. It’s all about “me”, with most people. Most of us also live life in the fast lane. We don’t always make time to see others. And sometimes when we look at someone in passing, we may choose not to see them. We, Americans as a whole, tend to judge others at first glance. We judge them by how they look or what color their skin is or maybe by what they’re wearing. At that moment, we make a choice whether to truly see them or not. I’m gonna tell you a story that I heard on the news the morning after that bible study…which was yesterday!
If you watch FOX 8 news, you may have heard this story. I’m sure you’ve heard the part about their journalist, Nancy Parker, dying in a plane crash over the weekend. She was 53 years old and had worked for them for 23 years. She was a wife and a mother of 3 children. She won 5 Emmy awards during her years as a journalist! Everyone said she was a great story teller and if you listened to her, I’m sure you’d agree. They replayed some of her famous stories yesterday in memory of her. The one that I watched yesterday morning just spoke volumes after the bible study we had the night before! I thought it was an amazing story that sets a great example for us to follow. I’m going to share it with you in hopes that it will touch you as much as it did me.
Nancy said she would just walk up to any average person on the street, she would talk to them. She said her philosophy as a journalist was “never look down on anyone & never think that you’re better than anybody”. So she told this story: one day she was extremely busy doing a breaking news coverage on the street. She walked into a Subway to quickly get a drink. When she walked in there, she passed a man that didn’t have any teeth, was wearing glasses without lenses, he was in a long trench coat, and he said to her as she passed by, “google me baby”. She stopped and said “google you? Why do you want me to google you?” He told her because he was a famous artist. She wrote down his name and number and told him that she was in a hurry but that she was going to google him later and call him. So she did! Sure enough, she discovered he was telling the truth and that he was in the Smithsonian for his ink art. He was an ex convict that spent most of his 20 years of incarceration at Angola prison. She decided to do a story on him in 2012 and for it, she won an Emmy award! His name was Welmon Sharlhorne if you’d like to google him also lol. He actually has an interesting life story.
I told you that story in hopes that it may have an impact on how you see others around you. Nancy said if she would’ve ignored him when she first saw him and met him then she never would’ve won the award. She said you never know when you’re gonna meet your next big thing. She finished by saying we should always pay attention to others and listen to what they say and try to be a good representative of the community. We, as Christians, should definitely learn from this story. We are supposed to be a shining light in this world by doing good works and glorifying God so that others can see Him through us and come to know Him also. (Matthew 5:16) No matter how someone looks, we should try to see others as Christ sees us all. We were all created in His image. Phillipians 2:3-4 says “Do nothing from self ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.” And Romans 15:7 says, “Therefore welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.”