The taxi driver created small talk with my friend who was fluent in the language I only pretend to know. I jotted down notes of things to be done, things accomplished, and quite honestly, things that don’t matter while the car bounced up and down on unkempt roads.
Some time into the trip he mentioned living in the United States. I began to pry with questions in an accent which betrayed the facade of fitting in with the locals. But I knew what I was saying and so did he.
Desiring a better life for he and his wife, he moved to Chicago to work in manual labor. The Land of Opportunity came with dreams, hopes, and stories of victors who have succeeding before him.
For the first time in the commute, he showed emotion. While he spoke about his children and wife there was a painful glimpse of something that once was.
Piecing together words in his story, I discovered the reason of his pain. In three brief sentences he explained that his wife and daughter had been murdered in their home in Chicago during a violent robbery. His son, he exclaimed, is brilliant and living in Texas with his grandparents while consistently scoring well above the IQ of his peers and selected in a special NASA program for teens.
The driver’s pride beamed like the sun off of the hood of the taxi. In that moment he was happy. But only in that moment.
The conversation ended and life moved forward over bumpy roads and my endless to-do list.
M. Night Shyamalan’s Sixth Sense has embossed a scene in my mind that will be with me forever. The eerily haunting phrase in the closing scene of the movie has shaped the way I interact with my community. Chilling and unnerving, I can hear the hushed and shaky words, I see dead people.
The taxi driver who’s name I don’t know was living like the dead. My heart broke as I sat in the back seat trying to figure out what to say next. And then I didn’t. I didn’t say anything because I couldn’t.
Who around us is dead? No, not physically dead, but emotionally, spiritually, relationally dead. See people around you who need to have the breath of life breathed into them. If not, you’ll see the nameless faces of taxi drivers who you wanted to share Jesus with but didn’t.
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