Connecting Hearts

By Peter Lundell –

I’m sitting in a Panera and hear a guy behind me making odd sounds as if he’s a strange person talking on the phone, sporadically reacting to the one on the other end.

I turn around. It’s two guys talking with their hands. Their conversation is intense, thoughtful, and passionate.

They glance at me, and I smile.

I go back to the days I did Bible studies in Japanese Sign Language with our deaf congregation at the Osaka International Church. But those days are long past, and I never learned American Sign Language. As I watch these two guys talk with their hands and show full emotion with their faces, I feel ignorant.

And in their world I would indeed be ignorant. I can’t even “talk.”

Outside, looking in, I wonder what the two are saying in their silent world. One leans intently toward the other, whose hands dance in the air, fingers swirling, now fixed together, now spread. They gasp and laugh at the thought I cannot fathom.

I want to know their thoughts, their hearts. I want to feel, as I did in Osaka, what it’s like to not be able to hear, yet express complex thoughts with my hands and whole body. But I am only a spectator.

As I walk to my car, I see the two guys through the window, their hands and hearts still impassioned.

How many people do we see each day, who may be a lot like us but are closed off in their emotions or are somehow separated from us?

To most people, we are mere spectators. And they are spectators to us. But God knows every heart.

And of those with whom we interact, do we really connect? Do we really know them—or try? Or are we not terribly interested, just doing our tasks and moving on?

“You have searched me, Lord, and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue You, Lord, know it completely” (Psalm 139:1–4 NIV).

Prayer: Lord, lead me to care about others the way You do. Lead me to understand with my heart the way you do. Lead me to connect with them and to be a blessing….