The Trap

It’s a trap.  Do you ever feel like the more we are pulled into the glow of the screen, our faces focused on the tiny, well chosen snippets of someone’s day, that little filtered photo, the less we see the real, actual things around us, the world as it is happening, are our eyes glow with pretend from the screen.

The hardest missions trip I have ever been on was 2 hours away.  LA missions trip.

People, real people sucked into lives where they are hurt daily, starving and fearful, children and adults.  One morning, as we wrapped our sweatshirts around our skin from the cold, blue morning air, people filed in for food from a dirty parking lot.  They have no other option or source.  As we served them, and talked to them, we saw grown men, broken and actually scared.  I spoke to a man in Spanish who actually told me he missed his parents, had fear in his eyes and didn’t know anyone around, he looked heartbroken.  We served children, and made crumbly fruit loop necklaces with kids who’s parents literally work in sweatshops, illegal sweatshops in America.  It’s in those moments you realize that you yourself as a Christian need to grow up.  This is real, and the more we stare at the false, the more we miss the real. 

Where are these people, these thousands of abused people?  They are in the places we are conditioned not to go.  But would Jesus?  Do we need to recondition ourselves.  Or are we too busy?  Are we sucked into the glow.