Beneath the Surface

So i just got back from an Alaskan cruise (amazing) late last night. Yesterday felt long and never ending. My first flight was delayed and by the time I finally got off the plane I had about ten minutes to run my short legs to a different terminal to catch my connecting flight home. I made it, just in time to find out that this flight would be delayed as well. I could have been frustrated I guess. Frustrated that I wouldn’t make it home until almost 11pm and I was only operating on two hours of sleep. Frustrated that my book sac basically weighed a ton and my back was hurting, or that the last flight was a little rough and I got motion sickness. I wasn’t frustrated though, I was actually pretty content. I sat down and watched the people around me. A little boy crying because he was about to get on his very first flight and he was scared. A couple guys hoping there would be room for them get on this next flight. A guy taking selfies (pretty entertaining to watch btw), and two women yelling in frustration at an employee because things weren’t going their way while two women before them called her incompetent and that they would find someone else who could actually help them. I thought back to a conversation I had with my brother earlier that week while we were staring at the ocean. 

He said it’s amazing how when we look at the ocean, we just see this seemingly never ending body of water and that’s it. But, below the surface of that water is this whole other world. There is life and death, homes and families, friends and enemies, love and loss, all separated from us by this surface that we can’t see past. There is so much going on that we don’t notice, or understand, simply because we don’t see it. How true is that for ourselves and the people we interact with. Who knows what the two women that were frustrated at the employee had to deal with that day, or week, or past year, or how many people yelled and cursed out the employee for not being able to help them the way they wanted. I think if we just all operated with the grace and compassion we ask other people to extend to us life would be so much more peaceful. 

It was a good reminder to me to love people simply because that’s what God has told me to do. My sight can only get me so far and even then it never tells the whole story. How lovely that the worth of a person extends past the surface beyond what we see. How beautiful that God sees and knows and doesn’t miss a thing. I think I’d like to be able to see more like that.