Invisible People

 

 

My husband and I were invited to a church multiple times, so one Sunday, we decided to go visit that church.  We walked through the front door, then walked through the front lobby and no one greeted us.  We found a place to sit near the back.  The pastor started the service and  invited people to greet one another.  Several people shook my hand, but very few even looked at me as they shook my hand.  Instead their eyes were searching for the next person to “greet.”   I felt invisible and it wasn’t a very good feeling; it was an all-too-familiar feeling.  Needless to say, that was our last visit to that church, especially after we heard what the pastor had to say in his sermon that morning.

One of the advantages of coming out of isolation is I think I notice the “invisible” people more than most people, probably since for so many years I felt so invisible myself.    Garbage men, bank tellers, WalMart cashiers, toll booth operators, mail carriers and others in service industries seem to be ignored a lot, I’ve noticed.  Afterall, we are all in a hurry.  We’ve got places to go, things to do, people to see…and in the hurry to see people we forget to see people.

Every week my sweet husband puts out a treat for our garbage man.  If we are outside when the sanitation engineer picks up our garbage, the garbage guy smiles, picks up his present, waves and often says, “God bless you.”  We feel we’ve always gotten way more back than the cost of a bottle of sweet tea.  A bottle of sweet tea, a smile, taking the time to look someone in the eyes, maybe calling them by their first name,  all these are respect others deserve simply because they are fellow humans.

So now I must close; I have places to go and people to see, and so do you.  Be blessed today and remember to look for the invisibles among us.