I found myself rather disenchanted with humanity lately. I ask the question “what the **** does God see in humans?” often but this past week i really couldnt see anything redeemable at all. I do think it has to do with the fact that im surrounded by a lot of people who are going through something right now and hurt people hurt people.
Last week was the hardest one ive had in a long time in terms of disenchantment with humanity. And right when i was at my wits end God showed me the opposite of what i was looking at all week. He showed me people helping and supporting other people. I needed that. He also showed me two other people that see what i see. Their eyes behold what im looking at and their brains came to the same conclusion i did so im not crazy….
Today i saw an ad for a sweatshirt that said something like, “need prayer? Tap my shoulder. We’ll bring it to God together…” im an introvert who discovered the bible at 25 years of age, not infancy. So, the fact that im not a biblical scholar paired with the fact that im an introvert who dislikes the idea of drawing people towards oneself purposefully, has always prevented me from wearing one of those kinds of shirts, but i find ability for prayer doesnt come from word for word recitation of the bible…it comes from the overall understanding of Jesus’ heart and the messages conveyed through the bible. it is better to get the gist of something and be able to apply it to daily life than be able to rattle off exact passages and numbers of verses word for word. I pray daily by myself in my house and occasionally with others when they ask me to say grace at a table or my patient who is dying asks me to pray while they are either facing their diagnosis or actively passing. I have prayed with others before but always at their request and initiation. To wear a shirt that would draw others to me would be very out of character for me. But i lost faith in humanity last week…not like almost did or was kind of teetering on the edge…like i LOST all hope and faith in humanity. I asked that question “what the **** does God see in humans?” again and this time the answer i came up with was “not a **** thing. Thats probably why we’re steadily headed for self destruction at this point. He probably took a look down here, went ‘shit yall have strayed so damn far from noah…i think we’re done with the human experiment…im probably gonna let yall kill each other off here shortly or program your little robots to do it for you, and then when yall are all perished i’ll come up with something besides humans and dinosaurs and see how that works out….’” God showed me a bunch of people being kind to each other, a bunch of people being reasonable, and he put me in a room with someone who took a look at what i was looking at and saw the same thing. Sometimes its tiring holding a differing opinion from all those around you but i was reminded in that moment of a saying written in my quotes book: “right is right even if nobody is doing it and wrong is wrong even if everybody is doing it.” I felt like this whole time i had been trying to help people and God put this sweatshirt in my path and said, “you want to help people? Here you go….”
I bought the sweatshirt. My neighbor who is an introvert running for school board says the way you know God is convicting you to do something is if its the last thing you would normally choose for yourself but you feel in your bones that you are supposed to do it.