Not So Strange

I watch CBS Sunday Morning religiously. I know. I'm probably the only person on the planet under sixty that watches this show, but what can I say? I attend my church at night, so CBS Sunday Morning is a restful way to enjoy my first cup of coffee and ease into the week. They do stories and commentary I don't see anywhere else and I like the fact that the host isn't hyper. Yeah, it's "easy like Sunday morning."

Anyway, this morning my favorite story was this one  http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=50152746n , about New York photographer Richard Rinaldi whose Touching Strangers portrait series "brings unlikely intimacy to photographs. For each shot, Rinaldi grabs strangers off the street and poses them like adoring family."

At first, people are hesitant. As one participant put it, "It was sort of awkward, and then...sort of not." After working with Rinaldi and the other people he's chosen to photograph together - after putting their hand in someone else's, or an arm over a stranger's shoulders, after looking deeply into their eyes and smiling, Rinaldi's subjects seem to become, well, intimate.

As a young teacher said about the much older, retired fashion designer he worked with, "I felt like I cared for her." An ethereal-looking young white woman says about her experience of being photographed with an even younger, very serious-looking black male college student, "It was nice to feel that comfort."

I watched Rinaldi pick strangers off the street, bring them together and ask them to experience caring about each other with no expectations other than a chance to show the rest of the world what that looks like--and well, you know me by now. I couldn't help but think about God, and how He calls those of us that claim to believe and trust in Him to operate in the world.

If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Rom 12:18

Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor. Rom 12:10

We who are strong have an obligation to bear with the failings of the weak, and not to please ourselves. Let each of us please his neighbor for his good, to build him up. Rom 15: 1-2

“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you." John 15:12

Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you. Eph 4:32

Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. Col 3:12-14

"Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples." John 13:35

In a world where, God knows, the rule is cynicism, meanness, vengeful hate, and divisiveness, He calls us to do just the opposite. And just so we make no mistake about it, God says that we can't claim to love Him and then not love our neighbor. We can't claim to love him and then look the other way when we see someone in need, and it doesn't really matter what that need is--it might be food, solace, or the gospel. Like Rinaldi, God pulls strangers from the crowd, brings them to us, and asks us to take their hands, look into their eyes, and become part of their world, to comfort and to care.

Steve Hartman, the reporter of Rinaldi's story, sums it up. "He shows us humanity as it could be...as most of us wish it would be."

The world wants the kind of relationship and intimacy that God has to offer. If we are His children, we will give the world a picture of what that looks like. If you've never tried it, trust me, at first it will feel sort of awkward...and then, sort of not.