LOVABLE PEOPLE

The world.

What do I see in this world?

How about hope?

How about love?

Yep, I see lots. I see people trusting with their hearts, and I see people being trustworthy. I see people genuinely caring for others, even if it is only the same small group of people they care about.

I see many good things. But I also see bad things.

I see people sacrificing the small group of people they love so they won’t have to face or be responsible for what they have done, so they won’t have to admit they were wrong.

I see people without patience, and I see it getting worse as time goes by. I see that lack of patience drives people to do things that aren’t good.

I see lust. And I see greed. Everybody can see these things, they are right out in front, and some are even proud to be as such.

But the one thing I see more than anything else is that people make images of themselves. They create false images everywhere, about many things. I see through most of these images. I am learning to see through my own, which I have created.

What bothers me so much about these images? I think it’s the emptiness behind them. I think for a person to create a false image of himself, it’s got to be almost like an insult to God, and thus, an insult to that same person. I see it everywhere, and I try to wade through the false image, and get to know the real person. It’s not easy, because so much of the false image we create is designed to protect others from seeing the real us.

In my life, I have created many false images. None of them ever did me one bit of good, so far as I can recall. But my heart sometimes bleeds as I watch the people around me create and maintain this world of make-believe where they have everything together, and where “everything’s fine”. I see this in the church as well as in the world, but my experience has shown me that with someone who believes, it is much, much easier to cut through the false image.

If I could do one thing tomorrow, I would help someone I know cut through their false image, to see the real them, and to begin to understand that the real them is lovable too.