The Machine Won't Ask

Today I would like to say a special word of thanks to those of you who have supported the Dial Hope Foundation with a financial donation. Your gifts make this ministry possible!

I remember hearing about a woman who made it a habit to buy her stamps at the post office counter — even though there was a stamp machine right there in the lobby. One year, just before Christmas, the lines were especially long. Someone pointed out she could skip the wait entirely.

"I know," she said. "But the machine won't ask me about my arthritis."

That line has stayed with me.

Because in a world where nearly everything can be done faster, more efficiently, without any human contact at all — what that woman was standing in line for wasn't stamps. It was someone who knew her name. Someone who noticed her. Someone who asked.

We were made for that. Not as a preference, not as a personality type — but as a basic human need. We need real voices. We need to be seen. We need, sometimes, simply to be touched.

I am struck, reading through the Gospels, by how physical Jesus is. How often he reaches out and actually touches the people he heals. He didn't have to. But he did. Because he understood something about what it means to be human. That love, to be real, has to be incarnate. It has to show up in a body.

Today — not online, but in the actual world you move through — look for the person who might be standing in a long line just hoping someone will ask.

Make eye contact with the store clerk. Hold the hand of an elderly friend. Smile at the stranger. Hug someone who needs it.

And as you do, pay attention. Because that, too, is where God shows up.

Prayer: God of Love, in Jesus Christ you walked among us — flesh and blood. You ate with sinners. You touched the lonely and the sick. You laughed and cried and suffered. Thank you for your incarnate love. Teach us to love others as you have loved us. Amen.