John 11:35 simply states, “Jesus wept.” Jesus weeps for those who are hurting and broken. There are a lot of people in our world who are looked down upon. These people often have low self-esteem because society is constantly rejecting them.
In my special education class, there was a blind man who used the long cane to guide him towards the front of the room. Gene was our guest speaker for the day. Once he started speaking, I realized that he could see things that our sight could never comprehend. He had the ability to re-evaluate the meaning of beautiful.
Even though he is blind, it never stopped him from seeing the beauty in all of his surroundings. He mentioned that “there is no pain in acceptance.” I knew right away that I needed to work on how I saw my surroundings. Life is too short to stress over homework, the latest trends or how much makeup we put on.
He has been made fun of because he does not fit into societies standards of beautiful. However, their words did not bother him because he learned to “look past the gray.” In every situation, like Jesus did, he only focused on the good qualities in people instead of the bad. There are so many unique and beautiful humans on this Earth, yet we are often taught not to make eye contact because making eye contact could be considered dangerous.
In the novel Bittersweet, Shauna Niequist states, “grace is when it is so silent that we can hear our own hearts beating, and if you listen closely enough, God’s is there too.” If it weren’t for this class and talking about God’s grace consistently, I would have bypassed the deeper meaning behind this phrase. God offers us grace in everything that we do and makes all things new.
A friend of mine recently visited a homeless shelter to find hundreds of people lying on the ground. These people wake up each day, some not even realizing what day it is, only to fight for their survival. A lot of them only have what’s on their backs to turn to instead of going home to a warm bed, a loving family and a home cooked meal. There is a myriad of things that I and many others take for granted; whether it be seeing in color or even seeing at all, I have learned to embrace everything that surrounds me. In order to be truly happy, we must see the true beauty of every picture; not with our eyes, but rather our hearts.
Maybe we as a society need to stop being bitter over things that are insignificant and start casting our eyes towards the one who blessed us with this ability to love unconditionally. I don’t know about you, but I am tired of living up to society’s standards of “pretty.” Let’s be pretty smart, pretty kind, pretty loyal. Maybe we are the ones who are blind and not people like Gene. Sometimes we fail to see how beautiful this life can be.