The Good News. According to the Humans

Great news!

It seems to be Hurt Feelings Week over at the Hergenrader House.

Everyone in our family (well, except Mike, who never gets his feelings hurt) is living in the land of Why Does Everyone Hate Me? and How Come I Don’t Fit In? and Do I Only Know Mean People? and I Feel Like There’s a Target on My Back and I Want Ice Cream! and I Need Retail Therapy! and I’ll Keep Praying God, But Only If You Promise To Make Everyone Be Nice To Me.

In other words, we all need a little perspective. And lots of good news.

Lately, my favorite source of perspective and good news has been the Humans of New York website.

This Instagram feed and blog is God’s reminder, more than anything else in my life right now, that this planet is populated by flawed people, who are just doing the best they can.

Here’s the idea behind the fantastic HONY: the creator of Humans of New York, Brandon, walks around the city with his camera all day, taking pictures of people and asking them about their lives.

The people are refreshingly candid in their answers.  Every single one of them has a story, a problem, a bit of advice, a tragedy, a dream, a heartbreak, a complaint.

And they are all willing to share their hearts with Brandon, and his gazillion Instagram/Facebook/blog followers.

The undercurrent of their stories is the same: I’m a little messed up, life is a little messed up, but I have hope it will get better. Reading these human stories is the good news, in thousands of tiny snippets.

To me, the overwhelming message is…

We all need grace, and God gives it to all of us, every single human of New York or Katy, Texas, or the Hergenrader House. God is the hope. He is the One who is holding together all these flawed humans.

When you have an hour, or six, or when you’re in need of a reminder that you’re not doing this life alone, check out HONY.*

*Because these are real people, their language and answers aren’t always PG. New Yorkers definitely keep it real.