Overheard on the train

There are blogs, Twitter accounts or other web pages dedicated to recounting the hilarious things that people overhear at work, in the grocery store line or on public transit. But, for me overheard on the train was utterly heartbreaking.

Riding the train back to Mitchelton from the city one recent Saturday night, a friend and I overheard several conversations. It’s quite remarkable the details people are willing share loudly and publicly. In one particular talk, a pair of young women a couple seats away, wearing barely-there-dresses, were talking about plans of going to the beach. One of them commented about her stretch marks after having a daughter just five months ago. These young things are mothers!?!, I thought to myself in more of a shrieking, sad tone then matter-of-factly.

The 17 or 19 year olds, I can’t remember, talked about the men they’d slept with, the ‘shit’ that’s in some baby formula and that they needed to call the one woman’s mother about when to pick them up at the train station. So, not only are these young mom’s out on the town, they’ve left an infant at home with grandma to tend to the child, and these single baby-mamas are also dressed-to-tease. Wow!

I seriously felt sick to my stomach, and actually cried during our walk home to the YWAM base. How can two lovely young women see so little of themselves that they would first dress this way, second how do they believe this lifestyle is normal, and three will no doubt pass it on to their own children. Don’t they know they are much more valuable?

If my heart hurts just to hear how these, and many more young women think of themselves, how much more must it break God’s heart to know what’s really going on in their lives.

It made me realize just how lucky I am to have Christ in my life. I’m lucky that I see that I’m a child of God, loved, and beautiful. Many Christians don’t really like the word ‘luck’ because it sort of leaves God out of the equation. But I think that ‘luck’ and ‘grace’ have a lot in common.

To get either one of them, we don’t actually have to do anything. We don’t do anything to get good luck…we don’t do anything to get the grace of God. He simply offers us salvation – for eternity and for here on earth. The only reaction, I believe, to grasping the reality of God’s grace in our own lives is to want to share it with others.

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For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast.  Ephesians 2:8-9 (NIV)

Break my heart for what breaks yours
Everything I am for your Kingdom’s cause
Show me how to love like you loved me

Hosanna – Hillsong