Group Hug

On Friday night, ABC’s 20/20 aired an episode called “Seeing and Believing: The Power of Faith.”

It seems the media has a fleeting fascination with people who are motivated with things beyond money or possessions or pleasure. We are freaks in their estimation and they often go out of their way to demonstrate the ‘freakiest’ among us.

Ater a long week of traveling the West, I was out of gas but decided to give the program a few minutes of my attention before crashing into the bed.

The first segment was all I watched, but it was all I needed to see. The profile was on an Indian priestess named Amma who has a global following and is able to draw crowds of 200,000 and more. What is her special brand of theology that pulls in the masses? A simple hug.

Thousands of acolytes will stand in line for 12 hours or more just to receive a few seconds of physical comfort from a stanger. Just humans longing for unconditional love from another human being. And that is all it takes to fill stadiums. A simple hug. Why didn’t we think of this?

So, it begs the question – what about us? Shouldn’t we be providing, at a minimum, this amount of compassion to the world around us? When was the last time you just gave a few seconds of love to a stranger for no other reason than to share with them the same love that Jesus shares with us everyday? Aren’t we called to give away what has been freely given to us?

I’m not suggesting we all go grab strangers and throw are arms around them – that might be a bit shocking and lead to a punch in the nose or worse. But I am suggesting that there is great power in the smallest of loving acts – those that only require a moment of our time.

I believe first that God provides us with these opportunities to share Jesus’ love hundreds of times a week. It only requires that we keep our eyes open for a chance to act and then act when God puts us in that place in time.

Talking our faith is one thing — living it is quite another. Some are intitmated because they cannot talk about their beliefs with elegance and ease — but who among us cannot hug?