The Most Important Thing

Here is the thing. I hate words. I love them and yet, I hate their limitations. Or is it my limitations in their use? Perhaps it's just because I speak English and need to speak a more expressive or precise language. Maybe I should learn ancient Greek. That probably wouldn't help much but at least there are multiple, more precise words for different types of love. That would help some, right?

Here is the problem I have with words: They can never express the wonder and awe and love I feel for the amazing web of humanity I see continually falling out before me. This and related topics are generally the areas where I feel words fail me most. I can never express to people how much I care about them, how much they've meant to me or express just the beauty of the human situations I find myself in. Perhaps I should be blaming my own capacity of expression rather than the capacity of words themselves

Here is the thing about people: I love them.

Here is the thing about people: they are inherently (at least in this phase of our eternity given our fallen world) compelled toward darkness- things that destroy them and destroy others. We hear Christian doctrine preached all the time about the depravity of man. How we are these sinful creatures who can do nothing without God. I have friends who say they see God's goodness and how people turn from it, how they turn away from Him and thus from their potential. People are frustrating. I could not agree more. Sometimes I just want to collapse on the floor as I helplessly watch people cripple themselves in turning away from God. Sometimes, I collapse on the floor because I just can't stop crippling myself or other people. But Someone always seems to help me up again.

But here is the thing about people: More than I see what I wrote above, I see the most beautiful things I have ever beheld come from them and within them (that I can only assume come from the Spirit within them). I see so much pure love and joy and selflessness. I watch children laugh uncontrollably and I'd swear all darkness must have disappeared from the face of the earth. I've experienced communities of people who will walk through fire for one another, I've seen complete strangers connect in remarkable ways, I've had people I never met come to my aid. Here is the thing about words in describing this vital concept: they fail me.

Despite our great capacity for darkness, God shines through it when some bright, light goodness breaks forth- it is these moments that I think we cherish most in life- the ones where this goodness, this light shines. It is in these moments that humanity shows who it was meant to be. It is in these moments that we remember that darkness in the end, does not win.

The important thing to remember about all of this is that it's mediated through people.
I think at times, because of the fallen world we live in and the sin that runs rampant in every one of us, we operate with a continually negative view of humanity. We devalue the spirits around us that are immortal even if the bodies that hold them will pass away. Even if the world that holds them will pass away. Because really, the only thing in your life right now that will not die (aside from God), are the Spirits of those around you.

C.S. Lewis says it best"
“There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations - these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendors. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously - no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption.”


So whatever it is that we are doing here, whether it be the work we do, the hobbies we have, the civilization we perpetuate with our existence- we must remember that it is the relationships we make, the people we pass by every day that last in one way or another. Knowing, loving, relating to one another- this is what we are doing here, this is the most important thing.