Let’s admit it. There are seasons in life when simply getting through the day takes everything we’ve got.
We’re managing responsibilities, carrying worries nobody else can see, trying to keep our promises, and doing our best to hold the pieces together. Our minds are full. Our energy is stretched thin. And sometimes, the only thing we’re thinking about is getting from one side of the day to the other.
I understand that more than I wish I did.
Several years ago, while my mother was hospitalized for triple bypass surgery, I spent a week sleeping in a chair beside her bed. It was an exhausting, uncertain time. My usual routine of sharing daily encouragement had become sporadic, and I certainly would have had good reason to focus entirely on what was happening in my own world.
But something unexpected happened during that difficult week.
God kept directing my attention to the people around me.
There was Cheryl, who shared a cup of coffee with me in the wee hours of the morning while both her husband and my mother were experiencing atrial fibrillation. Neither of us could sleep. We were two worried women sitting together in the middle of the night, finding a little comfort in the simple company of someone who understood.
There was Gale, a sweet woman I met in the hallway. Her husband was in the oncology ward. I helped her carry her bags to the car, and we shared a few encouraging moments along the way.
And then there was the frail little man wandering the hospital corridors. He had just received bad news about his wife of sixty years. He had no one sitting beside him to pray with him, no one to help him carry the weight of that moment.
I wanted so badly to make everything “okay”. And if I couldn’t… part of me wanted to turn the other way and pretend I hadn’t seen him. I realize that sounds horrible! But— it’s painful to witness someone hurting and be helpless to change things.
I was so afraid I’d say something “wrong”. Make things worse. Or… I’d have to sit and watch him fall to pieces.
But God just wouldn’t let up. He kept prodding me. So I took a deep breath and wandered over to this elderly stranger.
I couldn’t change his circumstances. I couldn’t make his wife’s diagnosis different or promise him that everything would turn out all right. I could only offer my presence, listen, and pray with him.
I spent about fifteen minutes with him.
Fifteen minutes out of a day that was already long, exhausting, and emotionally demanding.
But I walked away reminded of something I haven’t forgotten.
Sometimes, the difference we make in someone’s life has very little to do with what we can fix and everything to do with whether we’re willing to notice.
The people we almost walk past
I think about that hospital hallway now and then. Not because I did anything extraordinary, but because it reminded me how easily we can become so absorbed in our own circumstances that we stop seeing the circumstances of others.
And let’s be honest. We don’t have to be in a hospital for that to happen.
We’re rushing to work, trying to beat traffic, answering messages, checking things off our lists, and calculating how many hours remain before we can finally sit down.
We’re worried about bills, family problems, aging parents, difficult relationships, and decisions that don’t come with easy answers. Sometimes we’re carrying burdens that make it hard to think about anything beyond what is immediately in front of us.
Life can be demanding. Our responsibilities are real. And there are seasons when we genuinely have very little left to give.
But somewhere along the way, it’s possible to become so focused on getting where we’re going that we fail to notice who’s standing beside the road.
The woman struggling with too many bags.
The neighbor who seems quieter than usual.
The person who keeps saying they’re fine, but whose eyes tell a different story.
The stranger who could use a kind word. The friend who needs someone to listen without immediately offering advice.
We see them, perhaps. But do we really notice them?
There’s a difference.
Seeing someone is a matter of perception. Noticing them often requires us to interrupt our own thoughts long enough to recognize that another human being is having an experience every bit as real as our own.
And sometimes, that recognition is the beginning of compassion.
A familiar story with an uncomfortable question
Jesus told a story that has become so familiar to many of us that we may have stopped allowing it to challenge us.
We know it as the parable of the Good Samaritan.
In Luke 10, a man is traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho when robbers attack him. They strip him, beat him, and leave him half dead beside the road.
A priest comes along. He sees the injured man and passes by on the other side.
Then a Levite comes. He, too, sees the man and passes by.
Finally, a Samaritan approaches. When he sees the wounded traveler, he is moved with compassion. He stops, tends to the man’s wounds, puts him on his own animal, takes him to an inn, and arranges for his continued care.
Jesus asks which of these men acted as a neighbor to the injured traveler.
The answer is the one who showed him mercy.
We know the lesson. Love your neighbor. Show compassion. Help the person in need.
But I wonder if there’s another question worth asking ourselves.
How often do we pass by someone who needs us, not because we lack compassion, but because we’re too occupied with everything else to make room for it?
Scripture doesn’t tell us why the priest and the Levite kept walking. We don’t know what was on their minds, what responsibilities awaited them, or what explanations they might have offered for passing by without getting involved.
Maybe they were total jerks! People who didn’t care about anything or anybody but themselves.
Or… Maybe, they were “busy” people. Businessmen. Farmers who needed to get back to their livestock. Weary travelers who were exhausted from their own journey and simply wanted to get back home to their families.
That possibility should give us pause.
Because we can be busy people with good intentions, too. We can love God, attend church, care about our families, and sincerely believe in treating others well. We can even spend time talking about kindness—all while overlooking the person right in front of us.
Not because we’re heartless.
Sometimes, we’re simply distracted. Sometimes, our priorities have become so tightly packed that anything unplanned feels like an interruption. Sometimes, we’re so accustomed to moving quickly that slowing down long enough to see another person’s need doesn’t even occur to us.
And sometimes, if we’re honest, we see the need and hope someone else will take care of it.
The Good Samaritan didn’t have to solve every problem on the road to Jericho. He responded to the person whose path crossed his own.
Perhaps there’s something important for us to learn in that distinction.
You don’t have to save the world
It’s easy to assume that only BIG contributions make a difference. That the “little things” we have to offer couldn’t possibly amount to much.
Surely our contribution would be minimal. It’d only be a proverbial “drop in the bucket”. Barely noticeable… Right???
But here’s the thing: none of those small encounters from the hospital required me to become someone different.
I didn’t need a special title, a platform, a degree, or an extraordinary amount of money. I didn’t have to organize a project or develop a five-step plan to change the world.
I simply needed to be willing to respond to an opportunity that was already there.
A cup of coffee. A little help carrying bags. Fifteen minutes of listening and prayer.
Small things.
But small doesn’t mean insignificant.
We live in a culture that often measures impact by numbers. How many people follow us? How much did we accomplish? How far did we advance? How much did we produce?
There’s nothing inherently wrong with measurable goals or meaningful accomplishments. Our work matters. Our responsibilities matter. The dreams God has placed in our hearts matter.
But what happens when the pursuit of bigger things causes us to overlook the smaller opportunities to love the people around us?
What good is building a life that looks successful from the outside if we’re too distracted to be present in it?
What if some of the most meaningful things we’ll do this week never make it onto a calendar, earn us recognition, or show up in anyone’s list of accomplishments?
What if the quiet act of sitting with a hurting person matters more than the task we were so determined to finish first?
We may never know the full impact of a kind word or a few minutes of our time. We may never hear how our presence affected someone after we left.
And that’s all right.
Compassion doesn’t need an audience to be valuable.
We don’t have to be the answer to every need. We don’t have to say yes to every request or neglect our own well-being to prove we care.
But we can become more attentive to the opportunities that cross our paths. We can learn to recognize when someone needs a listening ear instead of another opinion, practical help instead of empty assurances, or simply the reassurance that they haven’t been forgotten.
We can stop assuming that someone else will notice.
And we can remember that sometimes, the smallest act of mercy is the one we were uniquely positioned to offer.
What are we making room for?
There’s a question I think is worth carrying into our everyday lives.
Not as another item on our to-do lists. Not as a new standard against which to measure our goodness.
Just an honest question.
Am I so busy living my life that I’m missing the lives unfolding around me?
It’s easy to answer that question with good intentions. Of course we care. Of course we want to help. Of course we believe people matter.
But our intentions and our attention don’t always line up.
We can intend to check on a friend and let the days slip by. We can notice someone struggling and convince ourselves we don’t have time. We can rush past a conversation because we’re already thinking about the next thing we need to do.
I know how easily it happens. I suspect most of us do.
So perhaps the invitation isn’t to do more. Perhaps it’s to pay attention differently.
Look up from your phone when someone speaks to you.
Ask the second question when a friend says she’s having a hard time.
Offer a hand when you see someone struggling, if you can do so safely.
Sit for a few extra minutes when someone needs to talk.
Pray with someone who welcomes it. Send the message you’ve been meaning to send. Let another person finish telling you what happened without rushing to explain how they should feel about it.
And when you don’t have the capacity to help, be honest and, where possible, help connect that person with someone who can.
These aren’t grand gestures. They’re ordinary moments in ordinary lives.
But ordinary moments are where much of our living takes place.
For those of us who follow Christ, there’s another dimension to this. We aren’t simply trying to become nicer people. We’re learning to love our neighbors in a way that reflects the One we follow.
In Matthew 22:39, Jesus tells us to love our neighbors as ourselves.
That command doesn’t ask us to disappear so someone else can be comfortable. It doesn’t require us to abandon discernment or ignore our own legitimate needs.
It calls us to recognize the worth of another person and respond with love.
And sometimes, the person God places in front of us isn’t someone we would have chosen, someone we understand, or someone whose circumstances resemble our own.
Sometimes it’s simply the person whose path crosses ours.
We don’t need to know their whole story to treat them with dignity. We don’t have to understand their pain completely to offer compassion. We don’t have to be able to fix their circumstances to remind them that they’re not alone.
We just have to be willing to see them.
The heartbeats we have left
That week in the hospital was difficult. I was worried about my mother, tired from sleeping in a chair, and uncertain about what the coming days would bring.
My circumstances didn’t magically become easier because I helped someone else.
But those encounters reminded me that even in a hard season, there can be room for moments of connection, unexpected kindness, and the quiet privilege of making another person’s burden a little lighter.
We don’t always get to choose what happens to us. We can’t control every demand placed on our time or prevent every difficult season from arriving.
But we can pay attention to how we move through the lives we’re given.
We can be so busy pursuing the next thing that we miss the person beside us. Or we can learn to recognize that sometimes the interruption isn’t keeping us from what matters.
Sometimes, it is what matters.
I don’t know how many heartbeats I have left. Neither do you.
That’s not meant to frighten us or make us feel guilty about the things we haven’t done. It’s simply a reminder that our time here is finite, and the ordinary moments we tend to hurry through are part of the life we’re living right now.
So this week, I’m inviting you to do something simple.
Step off the treadmill long enough to look around.
Notice the people you might ordinarily pass by. Pay attention to the needs that don’t announce themselves loudly. Be willing to offer what you can, even if what you can offer seems small.
You don’t have to save the world.
You don’t have to fix everything.
But you might be able to make one person’s day a little less lonely, one burden a little lighter, or one difficult moment a little more bearable.
And you may never know just how much that mattered.
Because sometimes, becoming who God created us to be begins with something as simple as noticing the person right in front of us.
And that’s a heartbeat well spent!
