The Divide

I've lived in the city my whole entire life, and for the longest time I stayed in my comfortable four block radius of the world, and rarely stepped outside of that zone.  As I  have gotten older, maybe a bit more adventurous, or curious is maybe a better word, I have been expanding that four block radius and stepping into the many different wonderfully beautiful parts of this place I call home.

The other day I got off work early and just started walking (I highly recommend just walking around places, you learn a lot).  On my little walk I was thinking big thoughts about the world, "what is the meaning of life" kind of thoughts I'm talking about here, and right in front of me, right smack dab in front of my face, was a can you guess what, a DIVIDE!!

To my left was the city skyline, tall condo buildings, the CN tower, big fancy business towers, that probably cost millions upon millions upon millions upon some more millions to build.  To my right were worn down convenience stores, laundry mats, people asking me for money for food, people without shoes, and a lot of trees.

This kind of boggled my mind, because there is literally only one or two blocks separating these two completely different worlds.  This place that I call home, this place that 2.5 million other people call home, we all live in the same place, but we all have a different meaning behind it, we all have a different experience of what living in this "city" means.  I was thinking about that a little more and I think that's kind of true of just life.  As a human race we have all experienced, love, heart break, sadness, joy, fear, excitement, anticipation, grief, but all of those feelings are kind of like my city no?  We have all lived in those feelings at some point or another, but what sadness looks like to me, might not look the same to my brother.  Is one more correct than the other?  Is one more "sad", or more true, more real?  No, not at all.  One feeling is not more correct than another.  People tell me all the time, it's not as bad as you, or I shouldn't feel like this you have it so much worse, or I'm sorry I know your situation is worse, and that kind of breaks my heart, except not kind of, it breaks my heart.  Feelings are feelings, my feelings are not more important than yours or his or hers or theirs, just like their feelings are not more important than mine.  You can be happy, I can be happy, you can scared, I can be scared, you can be joyful, I can be joyful, you can be in love, I can be in love, let's just respect EACH OTHER and OURSELVES enough to realize that we can all feel whatever it is we feel.

Then my train of thought turned in a different direction, and I started wondering about our ministry.  What if I just stayed in my four block radius, because I wanted to, because it was comfortable, because I liked it, because it had everything I needed, I don't know, whatever the reason was I just stayed there, all day every day, forever and always.  Then I would never look around the corner, I would never see the opportunity for ministry, for showing love, for listening, for meeting new people, for making new experiences, that were all available to me just around the corner.   All I had to do was walk, that is literally it.  A whole new experience, all new neighbours, all new opportunity to love the way my saviour calls me to love were all standing right there, I just needed to turn my head.  

So there is the walking thought rant of the week for you, I hope you understood it!  

I hope you all have and have had a fabulous week.

YOU ARE LOVED!