Advent devotion: Those people

In today’s fast-paced and commercial culture, we are often inclined to surround ourselves with treasures, whether they are items or people. We don’t always have the time to sit down and think about why we treasure them, and what exactly that means.

It’s easy for us to treasure the people that we’re close to, such as friends, as we know them well, and in many cases have had the opportunity to choose our level of closeness. Some people, such as family, are just there, yet we still can treasure family members just the same. We don’t always do so, but there’s the opportunity to.

What’s more difficult to wrap our heads around is treasuring the people we don’t know. It could be the musician that we’ve just passed by on the street who is playing a musical instrument, or the person we see every morning who’s clutching to that cup of coffee like it contains the very essence of life itself. I helped run a soup kitchen for several years during college, and meeting many people who were at a difficult stage in their lives, I found that despite all the differences that we in the room had, we all were first and foremost people, and that bound us and brought us together.

In the last few weeks and months, there has been a lot to ponder when it comes to people. In fact, people have become a very divisive topic, whether it be the immigration policies being talked about by the various political candidates, or whether a refugee needs to be a Christian in order to be allowed entry through a nation’s borders. There has been a lot of discussion in the media about “these people” or “those people,” and about how to treat them or what to do with them. When I come to ponder the issue of people, I try to remember that all people have a story to them, and we all share in our humanity. I also remember that when it comes to people and their stories, Christ wants to know them all.

Brett Hagen is a systems engineer at ITsavvy. He lives in Davenport – and might be a little bit of a Seattle Seahawks fan.