Monday Bus Ride

Being a student of theology I can't help but look for creative ways that God reveals God's self to us through various moments in our day to day lives.

I had one of those moments on the bus yesterday morning on my way to work. As we approached a stop a woman carrying a young child made her way to the front of the bus. Now, walking on a bus as it's simultaneously jostling over the uneven, pot-hole ridden roads of Pittsburgh and slowing to a stop is no easy task, and this woman struggled a bit. She stumbled as the bus driver hit the brakes, and this caused the young boy she was carrying to bump his head on one of the aluminum poles positioned throughout the bus for passengers' stability.

It was at this moment I looked up to see the child clumsily bring his hand to the hurting spot on his head and gently touch it. He didn't cry, nor did he make any sound at all. He quietly sat in the crook of his mother's arm and looked back at the pole on which he hit his head and then out the bus window, his big brown eyes moving from point to point.

I don't know exactly what it was but I felt a connection with this child. I felt sorry for him and wanted to help him. Maybe it was the sad look he gave me as he touched the hurting spot on his head, I don't know. But I do know this: I didn't know this child; not his name, his age, his family, nor the sound of his voice. Yet I still felt compassion for him, still sympathized with his hurt, and still felt this unexplainable connection.

Perhaps that was a small taste of the way God feels toward us, the way God loves us, the way God likes us. Perhaps this is the relationship between the divine Creator and humankind: in the absence of our human words, love, and acknowledgment of the divine source of human life, we are still loved. And this love is merited not by anything we should say or do, but by our sheer existence which is born of that same love.

It's inspiring moments like those that sustain a joyful spirit within me throughout the day.