Say what you will about broadband speed. The Internets still lag woefully behind when it comes to viral videos. Take this one that just hit it big, more than two years after the events in it took place.
If you’re a cryer, get some Kleenex. If (like me) you’re a cynic, pop some serotonin. This is something worth being moved by.
It’s tempting to share this video with some kind of moral commentary attached to it. Something like “This just shows that we all worship one God” or “This just shows the power of music to bring people together.”
What this really just shows is two guys singing together, awkwardly at first, then hitting a groove and trusting each other enough to build the song around each other’s riffs. It just shows that we love seeing these moments, even from the remove of two years and a computer monitor.
Carlos Whittaker is a musician/speaker/preacher/spiritual hustla who was, presumably, just doing his job on a chilly winter day. You can see that it’s awkward for him, at first, when this dude breaks through the barricade of fancy cameras and recording equipment to engage with him.
But he rolls with it.
You can see that it gets awkward for the homeless guy, too, when he realizes that he’s being co-opted into this project.
But he rolls with it.
We don’t know what happened between the cuts — maybe the homeless guy ranted about some stuff or said some bad words. And we don’t know what happened afterward — if Carlos and his film crew backed away with stiff smiles before the guy could hit them up for spare change.
Grace is like that. It changes lives, but it seldom changes them all at once — it does it through moments, with glimpses into how things could be. It takes over for a minute, then leaves us thinking about it, wondering if we’d have chosen it freely, if it hadn’t taken us unawares.
And yes, grace teaches us lessons of one kind or another — not so much because it’s supposed to, but because grace humbles us and makes us willing and eager to learn. Whatever moral lessons people are posting in the comment threads following this video, they are very likely true, at least for the person who posts them.
But here’s my advice: don’t go looking for your “lesson,” and goodness sake don’t attack the lessons other people have shared. Instead, let grace show up unexpectedly, and give you whatever it is you need. Let grace turn another day of you doing your job into something that leaves everyone amazed.
