I frequent a few different 7-Eleven stores in my community. At one of them specifically, there’s two older gentlemen that meet there every single day. They arrive in two separate cars, buy their coffee, and sit in one of their pickup trucks as they drink their coffee and chat. You can tell they’ve been friends for decades.
Since I’m always with open ears for meaningful content to write about, I decided to eavesdrop on them. I was hoping that their conversation would be full of wisdom and life’s gems I could learn from. Maybe some stories about deep sea fishing, the years past in my community, their families struggles through the Great Depression, or how wonderful it is to be blessed with a long life. It was a cool autumn morning, so they were sitting with the pickup truck’s windows open.
To my disappointment, but not my surprise, their entire conversation was one finger-pointing to other people and the other side, people who they have probably never met or had any meaningful interaction with. “These people are ruining our country, ruining our community, ruining our lives,” was the summary of the twenty minutes of the conversation that I could stomach.
Instead of being a hypocrite and myself pointing a finger at them as well, I left with only one thought in mind and heart, “I really hope that we heal. I hope we heal as a community, a nation, and as the human race. If we don’t, we won’t survive much longer like this.”
I hope we heal from some of the great grievances done to people and people groups in this nation in the past. I don’t believe that time alone heals all gaping wounds. I believe that there needs to be some deep soul-searching and spiritual surgery done in our hearts as we forgive, heal, and reunite in a very real way, that we may have some real, raw, and uncomfortable conversations, yet come out healed on the other side.
I hope we heal and return to true, lasting neighborly affection. I hope we return to caring for one another despite our individual personal beliefs and convictions – delivering Thanksgiving pies and Christmas cookies to the people that live next door and welcoming the new family on the block with open arms and an open door.
I hope we heal and our countenance softens again. Everywhere I go, people seem so hardened, downcast, and indifferent towards each other. Smiles are becoming a thing of the past, especially towards a complete stranger.
I hope that families heal and reunite. I hope that holiday dinner tables become places we rush to rather than completely dread. I hope our children heal; our adolescents and teenagers do too. I hope our public schools and universities heal. I hope we heal from the trauma, the violence, and all of the words too. Words can do more damage than each of us understand.
I really hope we heal from the memories, the things we never speak about.
I hope that our churches heal. The sharp division that we see in society has entered into the church as well. A place we were supposed to go to collectively worship and find a family that is more united and upwardly focused than anything else has also been cut up with society’s knife of divisiveness.
I hope that each one of us is willing to start looking inside rather than outside. That we do some honest self reflection rather than constantly and conveniently placing blame somewhere else. I hope we humble ourselves, turn away from what is clearly written as wrong, and begin to heal.
