A Tale of Two Stories

This morning, after a refreshing Norton lecture in Humanities, I ventured up to the Knight and Day Cafe (purveyor of fine coffee and other miscellaneous college essentials) to fill my mug of black caffeinated goodness. Looking out at our fine educational institution, I had a spark of philosophy in which I suddenly ventured to ask "What is everyone here thinking about?" While it would be nice, if not overwhelming, to know what everyone is thinking, I was left to speculate.

I am willing to guess that most of us, if we were take a snapshot of our daily stream of consciousness, would find the thoughts of our mind to be regarding ourselves, our interests, our lives, and other things that directly concern us. Granted, I know this isn't always the case, we do have moments spread through the day where we think about other people, places, and things. For example, upon checking the news I observed there was a considerable earthquake in the Himalayas, a typhoon in Japan, and the Libyan rebels are getting held at a standstill by some especially resilent pro-Quaddafi forces. However, after I clicked out of the news, I went right back to my same old thought process of "I'm hungry... I'm bored... is there really that much of a difference between hunger and boredom? I don't want to write my paper... Pandora radio knows me so well... I want more coffee... "

I don't want to demonize the self, nor do I want you to get the image that thinking about yourself is evil, because it isn't. I don't think we're terrible people for thinking about ourselves, it seems pretty natural to do so, and most of us do it out of habit rather than vanity. But I do want to ask the question "What if we thought about others more?" What if, rather than thinking for a few seconds about the poor Himalayan people who lost friends and relatives in the 6.9 earthquake, I thought for a few minutes about it, maybe said a prayer for them, put myself in their shoes? Or, to bring it closer to home, what if I spent more time than a passing glance thinking about the homeless man pushing his cart down the street? What could be different if I spent 5-10 minutes in his life? What if we all did that? What if we all had a few more minutes a day that we take a break from ourselves and spent time thinking, praying, considering others? What if our thoughts told us a different story, one that wasn't overwhelmingly about us, but one that shifted its focus to include others, people we don't know yet, people who aren't always like us?

This is precisely the mindset we should have as Christians, one that considers the bigger picture of thing, one that draws us out of ourselves to consider, and even more, to love others. I think that if we really consider other people, we're compelled to love them, and if we really love someone, we're compelled to act on that love. So our challenge is this, to consider, to love, and to act. If you're reading this, take a quick glance at the people around you, re-examine your day and consider the people you crossed paths with, and spend some time keeping them in thought and prayer. Such a thing seems small, but it really can change the world.