He sat on the side of the road recently in his motorized wheelchair, his face buried in one of those plastic bags used by fast food restaurants for take-out orders. Given the location, I suspected that he had just made a purchase at the chicken place across the parking lot from where he sat. The intersection where I spied him is a busy one with cars coming from every direction. Rarely is there a letup in the traffic, and since I could see no housing nearby, in the moments I idled there waiting for the light to change, I worried about his negotiating the cars to get home.

He didn’t seem worried in the least. Actually, he was oblivious to everything that was happening around him. He did look up a couple of times, but it wasn’t at the cars or the daily noise. He just came up for air for a few seconds, then would bury his face again in the food sack. I thought, “That must be some kind of chicken. I may have to stop there soon.”

The light changed, I drove on, but the image stayed with me. Someone so enthralled by something that the distractions of life held no interest. Someone so caught up in the moment that he didn’t care or see what others saw or thought.

But at least one other did see and think and wonder what was so wonderful that everything else faded away. And as I did all those things, I thought about those times in which I have said that God’s love for us is so powerful and intoxicating that it is able to capture all our attention and interest. And, I thought about how often that has been true for me. And I wondered if anyone else could ever see it.