Somebodies and Nobodies

Sometime during the last year I read a book entitled "Divine Nobodies-Shedding religion to find God and the unlikely people who help you". The author, Jim Palmer, shares his story of being a very successful religious "club leader", climbing the club status ladder, all in the name of doing the Lord's work. However, when his marriage fell apart and he found himself without a "ministry job", he began to learn about God in fresh ways, not from any deep philosophical self-help seminars, but from some very ordinary people.

People like:

• a waffle house waitress
• a jazz drummer
• a Hip-Hop enthusiast
• the kids of a family
• an auto mechanic
• a gay friend (not a condoning of the lifestyle)
  
• a family suffering tragic loss
• a swim teacher from the "wrong" political party
• a catholic priest
• a tire salesman
• etc.

For now I'll leave the lessons learned for you to check out in the book (no I'm not getting a financial benefit from that statement-I don't even know the author). One of the big takeaways for me was the idea that maybe God not only cares about "nobodies", He loves to use them. In fact, don't we see Jesus spending a great deal of time with the nobodies? Did He not point out great spiritual lessons from their lives.

It seems that society (uh-ah my very own heart) naturally glamorizes the "somebodies" of the world as the ones to learn from and revere. The interesting thing is that it takes a pyramid of nobodies supporting a somebody to make them a somebody.

Maybe God has got some beautiful things to teach/show us about Himself if we'd peel our eyes off the "somebodies" and start noticing the "nobodies". And if we can't do our own peeling, He's got interesting ways to help with heart-eye-peeling.