How many people does one get to know over a lifetime? Families, neighbors, classmates, teammates, church members, members of organizations, work, volunteering and projects, business acquaintances……the list goes on. Then there are the people whom we feel like we know, but in reality do not. Those might include athletes, TV, music or movie stars, politicians, and other well-known people we recognize and about whom we know a few things.
Once I tried to guestimate how may parishioners I may have known over the years. With all the transiency of the West, I could only know the number was in the thousands. On occasion I am able to network and connect people in my present life with someone in my past for jobs, internships, or simply conversation and advice. Afterward someone may ask, “How did you do that?” My response: “I know people.”
Indeed I do. Indeed I have. The same, of course is true of us all. For myself, sometimes it seems my life is a story. Its plot was driven and composed by the thousands of stories that intersected my life to create my story. Some of those intersecting stories were brief, some quite long. Some, I can’t even remember the names.
Your story is the same. It is the mosaic of so many people who have crossed your paths during your young, middle-aged, or long- in- years life. It may take a village to raise a child, but it takes a tremendous number of people to make us who we are and who we are yet becoming.
I can’t help but wonder how many people have been affected by our stories? Like George Bailey in the movie, “It’s a Wonderful Life,” some have been touched by us without us even realizing it. We were just doing through life, being who we were and who we are and some part of us touched another.
This is how we can see God at work. This is part of our Epiphany as we see the God who enters this earth and life as one of us, comes to us through the stories of those who came through and come through our life. This God comes to others through our story as we crisscross through multiple other lives. We are both impacted and impacting because of the God who made a home in human flesh.
I know people. You know people. People know us. Because of this, we also know God a bit more. Because of this, we have all had God meet us and meet us up close. Tell the stories. Hear the stories. Be the story. God loves to tell the story through Jesus and through God’s people.