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Topic: hope (03/29/04)
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TITLE: Not Another Face in the Crowd By Doug Rand 03/31/04 |
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A soft breeze rustled the trees and carried the tantalizing aroma of hot dogs, sausages, and boiled peanuts from the myriad of street vendors. Thousands of shoppers and tourists waded through each other’s presence, their laughter and conversation eclipsed by the cacophonous blend of sirens, screeching tires, and taxi horns. Across the street in a tulip-lined park, several young men danced to boom box tunes while a warm sun danced to its own lazy rhythm among scattered high clouds.
It was Manhattan at its finest. And standing on the corner of 59th Street and Fifth Avenue, I was quietly drinking in the sights and sounds of New York while waiting for my wife, Karen, to finish some last-minute shopping at the “toy store on steroids”,
FAO Schwarz.
Earlier that afternoon, Karen and I had gone our separate ways while exploring the store but met again at the door for a quick jaunt into Central Park. But before we turned back toward Times Square, Karen remembered one last thing she needed to buy for one of the kids. I agreed to wait on the corner adjacent to the Plaza Hotel fountain. But the busy-ness of the city lured me away.
I didn’t go far, perhaps no more than 100 feet from my designated waiting area. My eyes were trained toward the FAO Schwarz Plaza and I reasoned that Karen’s bright red shirt and familiar face would be easy to spot. But I had underestimated the sheer confusion that wave after wave of human faces can create. In the blur and the crush of the masses, Karen had finished her shopping and had somehow slipped past me.
A look of apprehension and fear was etched on her face as she stood at the very spot where I had promised to wait for her. I hurried to her side, slicing my way through swarming taxis and horse drawn carriages, and promised to stay near as we turned toward the subway that would take us back to our hotel.
Over seven million people live in the five boroughs of New York City. I was unable to distinguish the face of a loved one in a crowd of just a few thousand. Yet Jesus Christ, the Creator of all seven million faces of New York, even the millions more worldwide, never loses track. He is never blinded by the crowd. You are always in His sight. And He is waiting for you now; ready to hurry to your side to calm your fear and apprehension. You’re never just another face in the crowd to Him.