Strangers Today, Neighbours in Eternity
Wasn’t it Gwendolyn Brooks, in Maud Martha, who once wrote about all this life and what shall we do with it? Bless her for asking.
We may have met before. Perhaps on the West Highland Way. Or that day in Dubrovnik. Maybe Warsaw or Berlin. It might even have been at a Horslips gig in Glasgow or the time I was in Boston. Perhaps we went to school or university at the same time. Who knows?
Or perhaps we have never met at all. What are the chances?
I found myself pondering this as I wandered through Glasgow yesterday. The streets were full of people. Some bright with a ready smile. Some carrying their burdens like invisible luggage.
A woman stood quietly debating which jumper to buy. For her husband perhaps. Or maybe for her dad. A man in a wheelchair asked gently for a few coins. In Waterstones a fellow was buying six books, moving with the certainty of someone who knew exactly what he was looking for.
I caught myself wondering about him. Gifts, or indulgence? Either way he seemed a well read soul.
And there it was again. That restless longing the Portuguese sometimes speak of, the ache to know the world and its people.
As the city opened around me, it felt like moving through a tapestry woven from unspoken stories. Each person I passed was a quiet universe. Complete. Complicated. Immeasurably rich. Yet all I glimpsed were small fragments. A glance. A gesture. The turn of a shoulder as someone slipped past.
It is astonishing how many lives we brush against without ever stopping long enough to feel the contours of their humanity.
Still, something in me thrills at these brief proximities. I find myself imagining the paths that brought each stranger to that precise moment beside me on Buchanan Street.
Were they running late? Thinking of someone they love? Wrestling with a decision? Savouring a small secret joy?
There is a gentle magic in the not knowing. A soft wonder that asks nothing more than attention.
I suppose that is the heart of it. The warmth I feel does not come from conversation but from possibility. The possibility that any one of these unknown faces might have been a friend, a confidant, a companion for a few miles or a few years.
We pass through one another’s stories like shadows. Yet the passing leaves an imprint, however faint.
It reminds me that the world is wide and still full of people I have yet to meet. People who might change the colour of my days.
As I walked, the thought settled into me with surprising tenderness. Even in a crowd we are not alone. We share the pavement. The weather. The faint smell of food drifting from a stall.
We share the quiet truth that life is happening around us constantly and vibrantly. And we are part of it whether we speak a word or not.
Perhaps that is why strangers draw my attention. They represent the untold. The unfamiliar. The chapters not yet written.
They remind me that the world is not exhausted. There are still stories waiting beyond the bend in the road.
By the time I reached the end of my walk dusk had begun to gather over the rooftops. The city lights flickered alive and scattered gold into the evening air. People hurried past with shopping bags swinging and scarves pulled tight against the cold.
I watched them for a moment and felt that gentle ache again. Not loneliness. Something closer to a longing for connection, however brief.
Perhaps we have crossed paths somewhere. Or perhaps our worlds will never quite collide.
Still, the thought of you. Another unknown face moving through its own landscape. Another story unfolding somewhere beyond my view. That thought carries a quiet comfort.
In the great weave of things we are all wanderers. Drawn toward one another by the simple warmth of being human.
And then another thought rose. Soft but steady.
Perhaps the warmth we feel toward unknown faces is not only for this world.
It may echo something deeper. A quiet recognition that in the long light of eternity many of these unknown faces may one day become familiar.
After all, life does not end with our brief crossings on a winter street. With eternity in view there will be time enough to meet those whose names are written in God’s Book of Life. Time without hurry. Time without loss. Time to see one another as we were meant to be.
Christians have long spoken of the promises of Scripture as carrying both a present glow and a future one. A hope we taste now. A fullness still to come.
Paul wrote of the hidden wisdom of God. Of things no eye has seen and no mind could yet imagine, now made known in Christ. Again and again Scripture points toward a restored creation. A world made whole. A place where sorrow, death, and decay no longer have the final word.
If that is so, then every stranger I pass may be someone I will one day greet not with curiosity but with recognition.
The woman choosing the jumper.
The man in the wheelchair.
The fellow with six books under his arm.
And countless others whose paths brushed mine for a moment and then were gone.
For now we move through a world filled with lives known only to God. Yet the day is coming when loss will have no place. When separation will end. When the warmth of unknown faces will become the joy of known ones.
Beloved. Redeemed. Gathered together in the same forever.
Most likely we have never met.
At least not yet.
But in the hope set before us there remains a promise. Someday, in the renewed creation God is shaping even now, there will be life enough to meet, to know, and to rejoice together in the great story He has written.
“No eye has seen,
no ear has heard,
no heart has imagined
what God has prepared for those who love Him.”
1 Corinthians 2:9