Something Extraordinary

Last Friday night, my husband and I were surfing YouTube with my sister, Carma, and her husband, Steve. We had already watched any number of silly YouTube videos—one about a racist dragon, another about a guy with bananas for hands—when Steve directed us to a video of a contestant from American Idol’s predecessor, Britain’s Got Talent. We thought it would be another joke; some poor bloke making an idiot of himself on television, with no understanding of his actual talent—or lack thereof. But this video, of an opera-singing mobile phone salesman, turned out to be quite different. This was an unassuming man, one of those people that we pass by on the sidewalk without a second glance. People like that…they sort of blend into the background of our lives, providing little more to color our days than a faded, nondescript wallpaper. This unassuming man, so ordinary, did something the rest of us would never think to do—he found the courage to step onto a platform in front of an audience (which included the likes of acerbic judge Simon Cowell) and sang. He sang his heart out. It was beautiful, it was moving…it was so beyond ordinary that it was hard to fathom how such a man could have gone so long unnoticed...that moment will stay with me, I think, till I die. It’s so easy for me to think only of myself, only of my failures and successes, that it was new and quite strange to feel the soaring triumph with him, without a speck of envy for his sudden stardom, without a single derogatory thought as to his unprepossessing appearance, without a single thought about myself. His voice and his courage to share it made him beautiful, and some of that beauty spilled over to me, and I only felt awe.
Years ago, when I was working at a grocery store, a disheveled man, most likely in his fifties or sixties, with old, spotted clothes and gnarled hands, came through my cashier’s line. He only had a few items, and he paid with his card. I handed him the receipt I needed him to sign, and he did. I watched him as he wrote his name, each letter made with careful, confident strokes. His signature was striking. He smiled as he handed the paper back to me. I don’t remember much else about him, but I remember thinking, here is a man who has found dignity in something so small as writing his name…
I wonder, if we looked hard enough, whether we could find in every “background person” some remarkable trait that makes him or her special, extraordinary. It is our exquisite individuality that makes us all so special. When I was watching Paul Potts sing, I felt much the same way God must feel when He watches us…with hope for what we can attain, with a surety of the good things He knows we can do, and the absolute desire to see us succeed.