There are 6.4 billion people on planet Earth today.

You can go to http://www.census.gov/cgi-bin/ipc/popclockw and refresh the page every second to see how the population is increasing.  Each one of these 6.4 billion people is a unique individual that has been personally designed by God (Psalm 139) with a plan and a purpose.  Including you.  We are all traveling at the rate of 66,780 miles per hour through space on a ball that is rotating 1,000 miles per hour.  If you love numbers, as I do, you will enjoy this website http://members.aol.com/nlpjp/speed.htm .

What is interesting is that each one of us is a totally autonomous individual living within our own unique world.  We are like individual planets flying through the universe at great speed with very little interest in the planets we encounter daily.  We fly by each other in cars; walk past each other in the mall; live next door to each other in the neighborhood; work beside each other at work; sit beside each other in church or school and yet, in reality, know very little about most of the people we come in contact with.  I included.

During a recent writing session with the Lord, He instructed me to get out and see the city in which I live.  He told me there is a world in every neighborhood.  As I was thinking about this, He further instructed me to ride on the city bus.  I said okay without doing anything about if for about three months.  He reminded me of it about two weeks ago.  This time I did something.  For the past two weeks I have been riding on the city bus two days a week.  It takes about three hours to make a trip from a local mall to the bus transfer station, take one of the buses going to the north part of the city and back to the transfer station and then the bus back to the mall.

The first couple of times I was looking for people I knew.  Mainly addicts I worked with at the drug rehab house I worked at for five years.  I didn’t see any.  What I did see was a whole world of people who are physically and/or mentally challenged, sightless, homeless, poor and other situations I cannot find the words to describe.  These busses are equipped for every situation of disability and the drivers are very courteous and helpful.  I saw interactions between bus drivers and riders, between riders and riders.  I saw one man get on; give a cold can of soda to the driver, then get off at the next stop to go into a convenience store to buy himself another can.  I saw the bus driver, a woman, pat him on the back as he walked back to get a seat showing her appreciation.

The first day I rode the bus, I got off to eat at a Korean restaurant I like, and then went to the bus stop to catch the next bus.  I was leaning against a telephone pole reading a book when a teenage girl walked up.  She stood beside me and lit up a cigarette.  After a minute she said, “Are you having a good day sir”?  I said yes going on with my reading.  She then proceeded to tell me she just finished her first day at work at a hamburger place.  She was excited about having the job because it was her first one since graduating from high school this past June.  She said she had had a hard time finding a job.

After a few minutes, I asked her if she was a Christian.  She dropped her eyes and said, “No sir, I’m not.  I was raised in a Christian home but I’m not one myself”.  She went on to tell me about getting into the wrong crowd in her sophomore year and how she finally broke away from them in her senior year.  She told me she lives with a young man she loves and how they want to make a life for themselves.  She has no contact with her father, gets along with her step-father, but doesn’t get along with her mother.  Then the bus came.  I stood back to let her on but she looked at me and said, “No, you go first sir”.  I don’t know her name but she knows mine.

Later that day, when I was back home, I was thinking about her and our conversation when the Lord said “Tom, let’s talk about this.  She is not a Christian but you are.  She initiated the conversation.  You didn’t.  She knows your name but you don’t know hers”.  I was left thinking there is something wrong with this picture.  I now know my purpose for riding the bus is to get to know these people, develop a relationship with them, and share the good news of Jesus Christ.  I am off on an adventure.  Part of my purpose.

This past weekend I had a vision of all of this and it came out this way.  We are all self contained in a world of our own.  We encounter others just like us.  So we have two worlds at a distance.

So we introduce ourselves to the other and start a process that brings the two worlds closer to each other. 

Then as we get to know each other our worlds start to join.

The more we converse, the more we learn, the more we become involved, the more time we spend in the others world, the more our worlds overlap.

Some become very close friends, some also fall in love and marry becoming as one.  It is a special oneness where there is intimacy but two people are best friends and still individual.

And so it is with our relationship with God.