Fiddle Dee Dee, It’s a Small World After All

Recently I find myself experiencing an interesting phenomenon: It seems as if everybody I know knows everybody else I know. The couple from high school who are friends with the brother of an old college friend. That guy from college who leads youth group with one of my younger brother’s high school friends.

And it’s not just that; I’m coming across people who know people who know people. A friend’s friend’s mother-in-law who knows a random guy I went to college with for a year. Odd little things like that. People who met and found out they both knew me, only to find out they knew a lot more of the same people than they had previously been aware.

This is the kind of thing that would happen to every once in a while, but has been happening a lot more recently. Not because I talk to people like a human being, but because I peep on their random thoughts through Facebook. I have two thoughts on this: One, I wish that I was a bit more of the connecting factor between these people and not just finding these things out randomly; I could use an ego boost right now.

Thought number two: Despite how big our world is, no matter what its population size, or what your background is, we are all connected to one another as human beings. If we take it to a larger perspective, despite the size, population, and diversity of our world, there is one God who fashioned it together and knows all who live upon it.

All these people who I come across that know each other, even though I wouldn’t expect them to, are not just a part of the human family, but a part of God’s family. This family is not bound together by geography, ethnicity, or human bloodlines, but by the blood of Jesus Christ. And if I make no other point in this writing, let it be that we are never alone: Not only is our God with us, but His children are everywhere, willing to cry or laugh with you. It’s true, even when it doesn’t feel that way.

It is a small world after all, held in the hands of a God who does all things well.

Apathetic Like Jesus

As one who attended a Bible college, I encountered a lot of people falling in love and getting married. Some couples were good friends, others merely acquaintances. One year, one such couple got married about halfway through the first semester.

I am not exaggerating when I say that almost everyone one from school went to that wedding (don’t pee your pants with disbelief-it’s a small Bible college). Several faculty members had gone, and every one of the R.A.s went-except for me. I was the only authority on campus that weekend. That in itself is terrifying.

Later on, when talking with a friend about why I had not gone, I expressed that in the most Christ like way possible, I just didn’t care. That phrase would resurface every once in a while in my vocabulary in the following years.

When I would say this about someone or something, I meant nothing vicious or mean-spirited. I wished people the best in a very general way, but if we weren’t friends the subject in question wasn’t that important to me. It just wasn’t.

In the past year or so, I have made a conscious effort to never say that again, for the simple reason that there is no such thing as Christ like apathy. I don’t believe that I will ever be friends with every person, much less good friends. That’s okay, because I don’t have to be.

But I don’t think not giving a crap is alright either. And it is certainly not right to try to tag on godly attributes to an ungodly attitude. If I don’t care about someone or something very much, I need to own that and leave Jesus out of that, because I know he is not apathetic.

Thank you, Jesus, that you do not share the attitude that I sometimes have. If Jesus was ever apathetic, there would not be a life, a ministry, a death, and a resurrection to celebrate, something that is not to be celebrated only this weekend, but in every second that we are given. Jesus, I’m sorry for tagging you onto my lameness; you deserve better.

I don’t necessarily know how to change this, but I know I need to, and that my savior hasn’t given up on me.