Every now and then I have a moment when I see the world a little differently. This happened to me tonight.
One of the cities my church has a campus in had a parade tonight, and I walked with a bunch of other people in the parade. We had a truck pulling one of our trailers, a banner, and we all wore gray (grey? I can never remember.) t-shirts. We had candy buckets, and we walked along a 2-mile parade route passing out candy and waving.
Overall, it was tons of fun. I met people from Substance I didn't know before, and the kids were a lot of fun to watch. But there were a few moments that made me want to cry. Walking in the middle of the street, looking down at the lines of people stretching into the distance, I thought of this blog post on Stuff Christians Like. I started to wish I cold walk up to every person there and tell them, very sincerely, "Do you know how much God loves you?" I kept thinking, "That little girl is God's favorite. That older gentleman is God's favorite. God sure does love that dad over there." For a few moments I got a taste of how much God loves those people, how much he wants them to come to Him.
After the parade we met back together for a bit. As people drifted away, I went and sat in my car. And I cried. Sometimes when I have those moments of seeing the world differently, I push it aside because it hurts too much; it's too big of a feeling. But tonight I just let my heart break for Fridley the way God's heart longs for those people. I may not have had words to pray, but I was praying for them just the same.
