LEARNING TO ATTEND TO PEOPLE

Saturday, October 25, 2008

The work of love is the work of paying attention. Love notices. Love listens. Love remembers. When is her birthday? What kind of coffee does he like? What is his favorite movie? Love is in the details.

Deborah Tanner writes a wonderful story about her great-aunt: For many years her aunt was a widow but then in her seventies she had a love affair. Obese, balding, her hands and legs misshapen by arthritis, she did not fit the stereotype of a woman romantically loved. But she was—by a man, also in his seventies, who lived in a nursing home but occasionally spent time with her. In trying to tell what this relationship meant to her she told of an evening when she had dinner out with friends. When she returned home her male friend called and she told him about the dinner. He listened with interest and asked her, “What did you wear?” When she told this, she began to cry: “Do you know how many years it’s been since anyone asked me what I wore?”

When she said this, she was saying that it had been years since anyone cared deeply—intimately—about her.

If you want to do the work of God, pay attention to people. Notice them. Especially notice the people nobody else notices. When you pay attention to someone, when you focus totally on them, you say, “You are the most important thing in my world right now.”

God pays close attention to us. Even the hairs of are head are numbered. God notices things your mother has never even thought about. And when we live in the love of God, we begin to pay attention to people the way God pays attention to us.

(Selected and adapted from John Ortberg’s splendid book, Love Beyond Reason)