Interconnection Though We Know it Not

" ...social classifications, within which my life and your life exist, have no validity. A Republican and a Democrat, a Socialist and a Communist, a Methodist and a Baptist, a Buddhist and a Hindu, a poor man and a rich man, a male human being and a female human being, an ignorant persona and a learned person, a sick person and a well person - none of these classifications has meaning before God.....Every human being as a human being relates to God."

-Howard Thurman, The Growing Edge

This is from my devotions yesterday. I reread it today. I cannot say how hugely happy it makes me to sustain this truth. To build daily upon the axiom that how other's perceive me is not who I am. How I perceive others has nothing to do with who they are. Who we are friends with or not friends with, this too, does not make us any more or less human. Who I am, is ultimately and only a child of God. A child of God who happens to live here on this earth, in this time. Through His Divine eyes, none us is neglected.

I recognize this much of the time.

And I would also say, that I have been blessed in some ways to have always felt a bit of an outsider. This status has forced me into deeper relationship with my Father and when I've suffered isolation or childish feelings of being 'left out', I have been able to know that I am, as David was, the apple of God's eye. As we all are and that God is not exclusive but loves us all with an everlasting love.

Growing up an only child to my parents, I never learned all of the complex subtleties required in relationship and as a result I have often pressed inward, consummating an odd man out mentality.

I don't know how many other people share this handicap because I'm not sure that loneliness and misunderstanding are trendy topics once outside the walls of high school. But I do know that it is only in my lack that I have gained much. In my silly self-imposed solitude, I have found the Comforter.

Today I can rejoice in my sometimes confusion at how the rest of the world seems to work. I can also, laugh, accepting that we all probably feel this to a certain degree and though we are unique we are the same.

I don't have to see what you see, but I do have to know that you are of worth and are a Child of the Lord, as am I.