Teresa and I were sitting in the food court at the local mall last week when I was captivated by the mass of people coming and going.  (You are shocked, I know, that I would brave the mall after Thanksgiving but I so love my wife that I gladly embraced such danger just to be with her! :-D)  As I observed people walking by each other with not so much as a simple glance each others’ way, the Holy Spirit spoke to me.  He seemed to say, “What if I lifted the veil for you to see these people the way I see them?  What if you could see their secrets, fears, failures, hopelessness, discouragement, and even their eternal destiny?  Would that change the way you look at these people, the way you engage them, or the way you present yourself to them?”

After I posed similar questions to Teresa over our lunch together, I started to wrestle with these questions and a theme of hope started to emerge.  It is hard to imagine that a mall could be transformed into anything because it is what it is, but that day God did something I never imagined.  He opened my spiritual eyes to see the quest for hope that is common in all human life.  While it is a fact that I have berated the materialistic obsession that especially characterizes this time of year in our culture, for the first time I started to see people instead of a philosophy of life.  I saw people pursuing the hope of a happier life, the hope of a few moments of family harmony, and the hope of acceptance and approval.

At this point in my experience, I became intimately aware of my own hope that in some way my life will count for something beyond my earthly existence!  Immediately, I became a participant in the scene rather than a detached observer.  Instead of questioning what people were doing in my mind, I began praying for people I didn’t even know.  A woman and her elderly mother in a wheelchair, a frustrated mom attending to three toddlers trying to do everything with their food but eat it, and a dad appearing to do anything but share the day with his family all captured my heart.  As I prayed, a sense of hope flooded my soul as a result of engaging in this food court drama.

As hard as it might be to believe, this trip to the mall altered my life.  Actually, it was a trip to the mall with two people I dearly love, God and my wife, that altered my life.  Hope is a wonderful gift from God to share!

What could God do in our lives if we embraced the mundane, routine experiences in our lives with an eternal perspective?  How would we engage others in these routines if we viewed ourselves to be among so many others than apart from them?  What could change in our lives if we simply asked our God for the ability to look at people through His eyes wherever we go?

Father, let us become people who approach every second of life as if it is pregnant and on the brink of birth with opportunity to experience life, and hope, as only you offer.

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