A few years ago I sat in a coffee shop in a small city where my husband was appointed pastor of a church. Like every city I have ever lived in, the population of this city represented people of different ethnicities, different economic statuses, different personal styles, and states of physical and mental well-being. It goes without saying we human beings are a diverse bunch, and even if we recognize one another as being visually similar, it’s difficult to have a true and total sense of another person’s inner life and heart. We see this in 1 Samuel 16:7 when God says to Samuel
“People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.” God knows we are individual universes of thoughts, feelings, and experiences. Psalm 139 tells us that the number of thoughts God devotes to each of us would outnumber the grains of sand! I can’t fathom that there are 100, 500, or even 1000 things to think about me much less more thoughts than there are grains of sand on a beach. I sat in that coffee shop waiting for my youngest son to finish his violin lesson a couple doors down, and I watched people walk by the window and thought about all of the thoughts flowing from the Father in heaven towards our feeble souls here on earth.
As all manner of people walked past I was overwhelmed with God’s pure affection and delight in each of them. God seemed to highlight something he loved in each person.
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