I’m writing this morning’s note from an Airbnb in Morton, Illinois. Rather than rent a hotel room, for barely a fraction more, Jennifer managed to locate a spacious two-bedroom first floor of an early 20th-century home just around the corner and down the street from where I used to live. It has a full kitchen, dining room, and living room to boot. As I said, Jennifer found it. Although, she isn’t here. My daughter, Evelyn, is traveling with me. We’re in town to visit my family.

For starters, I just got back from a quick trip to the local McDonald’s for my usual Sunday morning coffee. You can be pretty sure I’m sipping one while tippity-tapping these Sunday messages. It took a little longer than normal to get the coffee. Usually, I’d just zip through the drive-through and be on my way. However, after sitting for a while unnoticed, I decided to go inside.

It doesn’t matter where you are; there’s something about restaurant dining rooms. They’re either bustling with vigor—people coming and going, conversations echoing from the walls—or they’re eerily quiet, as though the building itself is holding its breath. This morning, it was the latter. It felt as though I was the only one awake in the town—well, besides the three workers I saw behind the counter and one other person who was already inside ordering something, too. Where I am right now, a house on Adams Street, is just as still. Evelyn is still sleeping, and the only noticeable sounds are the taps at my keyboard and a faint machine hum coming from what I’m guessing is the furnace.

I don’t mind the quiet. Stillness has its charm. Because I’m almost always on the move, when I do have a moment like this, especially one that occurs in a relatively unfamiliar location, it becomes an opportunity for a unique kind of reflection. Typically, I’m in my office when I write these notes. I can observe my surroundings—or whatever might be swirling around in my head—without distraction almost every Sunday from my computer chair. But in this particular space—a hardwood chair at a small round table in a unique corner of a much wider world—there’s an exclusive character to its ordinariness. This is to say, while the room’s décor might not win awards, and the coffee I drink ritually is barely up to par, there’s no place like this place right now. If I’m willing to consider that even the simplest things bear a treasure trove of inspiration, then I’m just as blessed to be where I am at this very moment as I would be if I were roaming the gilded halls of the Hermitage.

But to grasp this, I need to pay attention. I need to look around and take notice of what’s happening—what others are doing, what objects are involved in the moment’s stillness as well as its commotions. For example, I mentioned before that I wasn’t the only one who stopped at McDonald’s this morning. Another person was there. Admittedly, he looked rigidly serious in his dark suit. If I’m being completely honest, he reminded me of a funeral director—or maybe a character from the film Men in Black. Had the shadow government sent an agent to Illinois to abduct and mind-wipe me? Who knows. Either way, I wondered further when taking his two bags of food in hand, he followed me out the door. But then I watched him climb into a silver minivan with two bumper stickers on it that made me laugh out loud. One sticker read, “I identify as a toaster,” and the other, “Citizens Against Bumper Stickers.”

For as serious as the man appeared to be, I’m guessing we have a similar sense of humor. Or he’s married to someone who has the same sense. Either way, I’ll bet if we spoke, we’d get along just splendidly. But to know this, I had to let more than first impressions determine our future. I had to give him a little more time and space to be his fuller self.

I suppose the congealing thought this morning is that as Christians intent on bringing the Gospel into a world of countless personalities, this is important to keep in mind. People are complex. They rarely fit neatly into the categories we might initially assign them. I’ve told my own children on occasion that when I first see a homeless person—or anyone who might be relatively off-putting—I try to remember that the person was once someone’s baby, and then eventually a toddler, and then eventually a child, and so on. This person was given life just like the rest of us. That alone deserves reverence. Stepping from there, even as someone’s first impression might communicate a hard and filthy life, or even an all-business and rigidly humorless demeanor, a closer look can reveal a human being with personality and depth, someone with an undiscovered past and an untold future, and among all of it, a human being who bears the fingerprints of the Creator’s artistry in ways we might never expect.

This is just one more example of something I continue to insist among any and all who read the things I write. I’m pretty consistent in encouraging my readers to look at the world through the lens of the Gospel. When the Gospel becomes a way of seeing, our surroundings become more than things, and people become more than strangers, acquaintances, or friends. Saint Paul knew this. He at least winked at it when he wrote, “From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh…. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” (2 Corinthians 5:16-17). He knew that observing the world and its inhabitants through the lens of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection was to see beyond humanity’s exterior to its divine value. To do otherwise is the old way—sin’s way. In Jesus, the new way has come.

Of course, and once again, Jesus is the ultimate demonstration of this perspective. The first example that comes to mind this morning is Zacchaeus, a despised tax collector in the sycamore tree (Luke 19:1-10). The Lord saw him for all that he was in his sinful past and present, and yet, He called to him, fully intent on giving him a better future. Why? Because Zacchaeus was innately valuable. Another example is the woman at the well in John 4:7-26. He knew her past. In fact, He proved it by telling her things about her life that no stranger would ever know, not even from a first impression’s hints. And yet, His goal was not to harness her to that past. It was to give her a new future. Again, why? Because she was His divine creation, and she was valuable.

In the end, my point is one of encouragement. I’ve written before that I have no problem finding plenty to write about every Sunday morning. That’s because there’s plenty around me to observe and investigate through the Gospel’s lens. And so, again, be encouraged to do the same, especially when it comes to people. Pay attention. Do so, remembering that each is a unique creation of God. I mentioned before that Saint Paul knew this. Truth is, the whole Bible knows it. The Psalmist certainly did, reminding us, “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalm 139:13-14). Every individual carries this intrinsic worth. With that as the starting gate to any first impression, no one should be dismissed offhand, but rather, there’s always room for second, third, and fourth impressions.