Faces of the Crowds

On vacation these past two weeks, we visited places filled with people: two aquariums, a renowned zoo, and towns that are popular tourist destinations.

I don't like crowds and walk through them in a kind of defensive daze. I don't often look up at people's faces, let alone feel inspired by them as did Ezra Pound in his famous poem "In a Station of the Metro."

But I thought about that: when I do look at people's faces (without trying to make eye contact), I wonder how the people are doing, what are their experiences, whether or not they're happy, what kind of understanding they have of God.

John 9 is a famous story of Jesus healing the blind man. The crowd’s reaction is interesting. “‘Is this not the man who used to sit and beg?’ Some said, ‘It is he’; other said, ‘No, but he is like him’” (John 9:8-9). People had seen the man every day as a beggar. But even granting that miracles elicit incredulity, some of the people had not, apparently, paid enough attention to him to know. (A similar story is the man in Acts 3 who seeks financial help, but apparently he is accustomed to people treating him anonymously, for Peter and John told him, “Look at us.”)

Crowds of people in tourist destinations are, necessarily, anonymous to us. But still we can occasionally look up, look at people, and long for their well being. I love this quote by Oswald Chambers: “The real business of your life as a saved soul is intercessory prayer. Wherever God puts you in circumstances, pray immediately, pray that His Atonement may be realized in other lives as it has been in yours. Pray for your friends now; pray for those with who you come in contact now.”