Charlotte left the holiday party. She walked to her parked car accompanied by suffocating emotions she couldn’t identify. There was a sense of unease and darkness she couldn’t understand. She just attended a party. Puzzled. She asked, “Shouldn’t I feel a sense of joy?”
But then she remembered a thought that boldly introduced itself shortly after she got to the party, Why am I even here? Charlotte took this thought captive for further questioning. She figured it may reveal what triggered her dark emotions and replayed the party’s events on her drive home.
Everyone at the party knew everyone else. They joked and engaged in cheerful conversation because they shared a personal history. There was chatter. Plenty of chatter. She tried to engage with others in conversation but with little success. They lacked interest in a person who didn’t share their history.
Now home, the colorful lights of her Christmas tree greeted her. The lights caused her to reflect on family Christmas gatherings when she was a child. There were cousins, aunts, uncles, her mom and dad, and sister. But Charlotte’s memory focused on one person—her dad’s mother—her grandmother. Her name was Johanna.
Johanna didn’t have an easy life. She worked as a secretary to support her mother and two younger sisters after the death of their father. There was a brother, but he left them to seek his fortune. Their home was an apartment in a gritty N.J. city.
While recuperating from pneumonia in a medical facility located in a rural N.J. county, Johanna met her future husband, Robert. Robert and his father were entrepreneurs who started a business growing carnations, iris and chrysanthemums in glass greenhouses.
They married and moved into a new, two-story home with white siding and a green shingled roof. The home was built on land shared with the glass greenhouses, and an open field that led to two small cottages. It was in one of these cottages Johanna moved her mother and sisters.
Time moved on. Johanna had two sons and a daughter. All got married and her sons worked in the family business along with their father. But when Robert died, her youngest son took residence with his new wife in the family home, and Johanna was relocated to one of the small cottages. Because her life had been focused on her family she had no friends, didn’t drive, or cultivate a hobby. She spent most of her time alone.
As a child, Charlotte, never knew Johanna’s thoughts at these Christmas gatherings. Her grandmother was celebrating Christmas in a home built for her, where she raised her family with a loving husband. Now a widow, she lived in a bare-bones cottage the size of the living room in the home she once occupied. Her younger, more gregarious sisters, actively engaged in laughter and conversation with other family members.
Charlotte remembered Johanna sitting in an arm chair and thought, My grandmother must have felt invisible, discarded and unloved.
This thought was revelation’s light. Charlotte felt invisible, discarded and unloved.
Charlotte knew she wasn’t alone. There were others like her and Johanna. Others who felt invisible, discarded and unloved.
That night Charlotte made a decision to honor the memory of her grandmother. Charlotte would notice the Johannas in her life. She would talk to them, listen to them, spend time with them.
They would not be invisible.
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No one is Invisible. They are God’s Precious Creation.
Who are the invisible? They are souls in your immediate and extended family, your church family, neighbors, co-workers and strangers.
Listen to Spirit’s prompt to see the invisible.
Notice them. Talk to them. Listen to them. Spend time with them. See them like Jesus.
Scripture’s Message
“When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” Matthew 9:36 (NIV)
Time to Reflect
What blinds you from seeing the invisible God brings to you?
