Musings in a Women's Locker Room

 "But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty..." 

(1 Corinthians 1:27)

    I never thought I would contemplate humanity while changing in the women's locker room after a swim Tuesday night.  

    There is something very vulnerable about dressing in a women's locker room. You are surrounded by females you don't know, listening to little children squealing in the shower stalls as they play with water. There is an older woman in one of the shower stalls coughing and running shampoo through her hair. I see a little boy out of the corner of my eye staring at me as I dry my hair. He smiles and waves at me. His mom and older sister are getting ready behind him. 

    I am struck by the humanness of the scene. All of these women and children are just doing the basic things: dressing, undressing, brushing hair, or giving a side look/smile to the stranger near them. All of us are bonding over the basics. We are all vulnerable. It's cumbersome to try and hide body parts without tripping over yourself or squeezing all your stuff into a small bathroom stall. So, several of us just change in the common area, acknowledging the other person now and then with a smile. 

    Maybe I am romanticizing the scene. Maybe I am just being a philosophizing PHC grad. But, being in that locker room with all of those individuals just doing the mundane of dressing and undressing felt so human. It felt unifying in a spiritual way. 

    When I think of yesterday in that women's locker room, the verse hits me that God uses the weak and foolish things of the world to confound what the world defines as strong. He uses us, just humans made from dust doing the mundane. He uses me, a nobody in the grand scheme of world events, because His Son gave His life for me. He calls me His daughter because of His Son's sacrifice. 

    All those vulnerable women and children who surrounded me may not know God. Some, or all of them, may even reject the need for a savior and thus not be part of God's family. Yet, I was reminded that we are all made in His image, though we reflect him brokenly. Humanity is vulnerable and needy. Just broken people doing mundane things. 

    Some of us, like me, are just broken people doing mundane things who have been found by the Savior.