The other day, someone joked that we should “speed date” in the office to get to know each other better.
I laughed.
Not because of the concept, but because I’ve speed dated before.
After coughing up the last of my pocket change, I remember sitting down at a nasty bar table, grossly aware that my jeans were dirty. Even though I donned the nicest shirt I owned, I’m pretty sure it needed ironing.
After formalities and I gave my pitch:
Hello, my name is Chase. I’m a Taurus, and I like poking dead things with a stick… HAHAHAHAHA just kidding.
I work with homeless kids.
HAHAHAHA …I’m not kidding…
I never thought I’d receive different variations of the same speech 13 times:
“Wow… you’re… You’re such a good man. I mean, you work with homeless kids. You’re honest and you’re not that bad looking. You’re such a… good… good… man. I’m sure that… somewhere… out there… there’s a woman for… Oh… that’s the bell… It was nice meeting you,”
Within seconds, the chair became vacant.
For some reason, I didn’t receive any phone numbers that night.
While this is an extreme example, I really believe that we just want to speed date people.
Give me the bare minimum, what you’re about, and how you can benefit me within five seconds, because I have more important things to do… like update my facebook.
While I’d love to tell you that I converted an entire nation of heathens to Jesus, most of the long lasting change I’ve seen from the Race has come from when I talked to people. When I sat down with them and we lived life together.
The other day, I received word that one of the people I knew of overseas a year ago passed away. Tears formed in my eyes. While I thought what I was doing was natural, a small part of me said, “You were there for a month… why are you so attached to them?”
And that’s when it hit me: because we did life together.
We ate, we told each other lame jokes, we made fools of ourselves to make kids laugh TOGETHER!
Our stories intertwined and when that happens, the only way I could describe it is with a metaphor: It’s as if we were both covered in different paint. Their paint colors did not match mine. But after a month of telling Chuck Norris jokes, moving tables, laughing at my bad raps, playing with kids and learning how to poorly speak Romanian, somehow my paint got smeared in with theirs.
Casey and I, spittin’ a rap on the race.
Photo by Robin Quinn Brooks
Now we both can no longer be the same color. Rather, we share a unique hue that has never been made before, created by the Creator of all things.
We are alive with the colors of God.
So the next time I receive a text, I think I’ll come find you in the next room and ask, “You wanna talk?”
