The challenges in and around me can easily overwhelm me. If I try to take them on, any one of them is too big, complex, and filled with unknowns. Where do I start?
I walked through an off-the-grid shopping centre in the port area yesterday, having just enjoyed a near-perfect double expresso, with the unknowns refusing to leave my mind. I was more than willing to try to take them on. Having said that, where would, could, and should I start? The printed words in two languages on a Red Crescent box screamed at me in silence, knowing I was oblivious to the obvious. Human First.
The problems in front of me can be described as conflicts, wars, protests, earthquakes, and human disasters with many different names. The size, complexity, and unknowns are captured in a series of questions left with us long ago; “But how can people call for help if they don’t know who to trust? And how can they know who to trust if they haven’t heard of the One who can be trusted? And how can they hear if nobody tells them?” (Romans 10.14)
In fairness, experience with love is the best way to understand love. Experience with compassion is the way to understand what unconditional acceptance, forgiveness, and love become when put into action. If someone has never known what help can be, my greatest calling is to help. If people do not know how to trust, offering them a safe place where they are welcomed, embraced, and respected is a starting point. If people have not heard, I have an opportunity to demonstrate what trust, love, and compassion look like.
Divinity’s response is with the individual and the community. Divinity starts with me, an individual. She makes a home within me. She meets me where I am. She restores my soul. She offers me light. She nurtures me. In doing so, I experientially find myself in a greater story filled with brothers and sisters. Where can I start in being divine? I start today where Divinity always begins, Human First.
