The Power of Inclusion

 A Push in the Right Direction

“Can somebody push me?” His voiced echoed through the playground where my children were playing along with other kids and their parents. He looked around 6 or 7. His grandma sat in the distance, unmoved. “Can somebody push me?” Older kids could have helped. A nearby dad could have helped. He was playing alone with no one paying any attention. But I heard him… God heard him. After hearing him ask a few times, I finally got up, went over to the swing and pushed that sweet little boy. Within minutes, he was off of that swing and on the bigger merry-go-round-style swing with several other kids, being pushed by one of their dads. He had gained the confidence needed to come out of the margins. He felt included, and because someone gave him the first push, others were willing to include him too. Now everyone played happily together. And I realized the “power of inclusion.”How many people in life just need a little push in the right direction? A word of encouragement? A smile that says “I see you…” How many children feel overlooked because they are “not ours?” To quote the movie Mother Teresa, “Children belong to everyone.” 

One More Sandwich

A few years ago, I stood at my tiny kitchen counter making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I was packing school lunches, like almost every other day of the week. But suddenly, there were three instead of two. I thought to myself, “It’s just one more sandwich…the power of inclusion.”  We had taken in a little girl, adding to our two biological boys. One more sandwich. One more of everything for about 9 months- while we fostered her. One more child loved and brought in.No longer invisible. No longer a statistic in the making. Just a sandwich? Hardly.

  Invisible

  I think about inclusion when I pack an extra lunch and sit among the homeless on a backstreet downtown, too. I don’t bring a lot of food or “stuff.” I don’t announce my arrival. Why would I? Who am I apart from the grace of Christ, who came and sat with me in my brokenness? I just sit with a couple of friends, we eat our own lunches on the ground and blend into the shadows. We have brought enough to share with a few others should they join our circle or pass us on the road. I lie on the grass for a few minutes, trying to identify with the person who had just left that spot after trying to catch a little sleep. I am under the sun and breathing in a familiar blend of street smells such as urine, cigarettes and dirt. I count cars as they pass by all of us and hear the Lord whisper “I want you to know what it feels like to be passed by.” The only people who usually offer to “include” me on the streets are fellow street people. I have never once been picked up or offered help by another ministry group, church or “Christian with a car.” But the homeless? They are quick to share what little they have and they look out for each other, even for me. You see, it’s not about how much you can offer or taking on the whole burden of someone’s problems, it’s a mindset. It’s using whatever you do have and doing whatever you can do, to love the one in front of you. It goes beyond material needs and into the soul. There is a cry for human dignity, for equality, for someone to stop instead of passing by again, as if “these people” don’t exist. 

Never underestimate the power of inclusion. 
It may not feel like much to you, 
but it could mean the world to someone else.