It happens all the time doesn’t it?

I lifted the hood of our mini-van to check the oil – seomthing I’ve done a thousand times.  My son’s mouth flops open amazed at all the stuff under there. “AWESOME!” he explodes.  Yea, I guess cars are pretty awesome.

I went to Uganda with a bunch of first-world folks who’ve never seen the third world before.  It messed them up.  They cried.  They got angry.  They got creative. They talked about selling their stuff and giving their lives and blogs to helping kids. Yea, I guess poverty is pretty disturbing/inspiring.

This isn’t stuff I didn’t know.  Just stuff I’ve grown accustomed to.  It’s become furniture in my cluttered brain, wallpaper you know?

It happened again yesterday. 

A friend of mine became a Christian in the last year.  And he’s changed.  Nobody told him to.  He just did.  I’ve seen him parent and husband differently.  He seems to notice more often now when his wife needs help or his kids need encouragement too. He’s seems more grateful, more alive, more unhappy with the status quo.  He talks differently, thinks differently and now he says he feels differently.

We were hanging out yesterday and he told me about work.  There’s this guy in his office who’s by all accounts a jerk.  Everyone thinks so.  And this used to make my friend angry – well, he’s still a little miffed by it, honestly.  But now there’s another feeling mixed in with the irritation: “I think it’s…sympathy,” he said with all the wonder of a kid seeing his first engine or an American seeing his first starving child fed.

Yea, this Jesus stuff does work.

And we’re awed together.  Messed up even.  He gets to see his “enemy” – the whole world – through new eyes.  And I get to see it through his.