The light fixtures in our lives

So there I am sitting on a porch. It's a moody and rainy day. I catch myself watching the mailman across the street going from one house to the next. I almost didn’t even notice the fact that I was watching him. I was in my own little world up in my head. And that’s the point… I almost didn’t even notice him… Then I stopped and intentionally began to think about all of the people in our lives that we almost don’t even notice.

The more I learn about people and the jobs that they do, the more I realize the complexities that are within everything. Even mundane things like building a piece of furniture, teaching a group of children, or working as a nurse have their complexities. 

When you make a piece of furniture, there are so many small details that need to be correct in order for it to turn out as a beautiful and functional piece of furniture instead of something that looks like something a grade schooler would make for their mom for Mother's Day. You need to take a concept and make it real. You have to choose the right materials, angles, and tools. You need to take a bunch of raw items and create something out of them.

To teach a group of children, you need to be a master communicator. You not only have to communicate to a group, but to each individual. You need to teach in a way that helps many different personalities and giftings to learn well and continue to grow. You need to balance and hold each individual student’s gifts, weaknesses, strengths, opportunities, personalities, and family backgrounds all while trying to pull the best out of them and push them in a way that encourages them to do their best.

The schooling alone for nurses is insanely difficult because of how many things you need to deeply understand in order to care for people well. Not just science and anatomy, but also knowing how to love people well and communicate clearly. To be a good nurse, you not only need a wide and detailed knowledge base but also the capacity to roll with the punches and work insane hours, all while caring for people while they are often in some of their worst moments.

And these are just the obvious things. Not even the million little complexities that I cannot possibly know or understand, because it's not my job.

Sometimes I look at all the people in my life that I treat like a light fixture. They are there. They play their role. They don’t expect to be appreciated. They don’t expect you to understand what they do and what they go through every day. And sometimes we see them, but we don’t really see them. Like the light fixture in your kitchen, you just see them as something to be used to make your life more comfortable. You would only really notice them if one day, they disappeared (or ya know, a global pandemic breaks out and makes you appreciate them).

The mailman. The nurse. The teacher. The garbage man. The daycare provider. The PSW. The cashier. The bus driver. The farmer. The parent.

They make your life comfortable and all you see them as is a permanent fixture in your life just doing its job. You don’t notice a light bulb for all that it does for you until it stops working. Do we really want absence to be the thing that wakes us up to seeing the people around us?

One thing that I hope COVID teaches us is to see people and to start to see them fully. But I also hope that it creates a change that lives on past COVID. I love that people are thanking their mailmen more often and appreciating our frontline workers right now. I just fear that when this is over, it will be so easy for us to go back to “normal”. We crave any sense of normalcy even if it comes at the expense of others. I just wonder how many of us are going to let the things we learn now take root and change us for the better for the future.

I don’t hate that people are putting up signs in their windows thanking frontline workers and doing things to thank their garbage men and grocery store cashiers. But their value to society and more importantly their value as people did not start during COVID; yet, somehow it is only during a global pandemic that they are acknowledged. Their value as image bearers of God does not go up and down based on how they contribute to society, but that's how we measure the value of a person. We choose who is honourable in our society and who is simply a light fixture that we would only notice if it were absent.

We have built a society that decides that your value is based on what you bring to the table. We have created a system that decides the value of what you are bringing. The value you bring is decided based on a system that continues to segregate and elevate specific groups of people and continues to push down others. You can feel that palpable gap nearly everywhere you go in the western world. The craziest part is that we in the Western world have also decided that the way we do things is “right”, “the best”, “the norm”. This position is not only prideful, damaging, and self-righteous, but it is clearly unBiblical. 

A Biblical stance on an individual’s value is not based on who they are, what they identify as, or what they bring to the table in terms of gifts, talents or how they contribute to our economy. Jesus clearly shows that when he wants to feed 5000, all he requires is for us to come and sit. He clearly shows that your past or your background does not factor into a decision of whether or not you are deserving of grace and a conversation by a well. God does not expect us to die on a cross; He sent His son to do that. He sent His son not because of anything we did, but because He just loves us... messy, broken, difficult, inconvenience and all. 

I think as we start to emerge back into “normal” we should really start to question what “normal” should be. What do we want to keep when this pandemic is over? What should we have never kept in the first place? How do we need to be changed by this? Will you let it change you?