The You're Amazing Seat
By: Mission Team
Picture this: It’s the middle of January, snow is coming down, and you’re walking in the frigid cold on the side of a busy road. You have been working ten-hour days for the last month, just struggling to pay the bills; you have been yelled at by angry customers all day and you just want to get home to your bed.
Behind you, a “Honk! Honk!” from a car is heard followed by a teenager yelling these words: “YOU’RE AMAZING! HAVE A GREAT DAY!” A big black van with yellow lettering that says “You’re Amazing” zips past you with someone hanging out the window waving and smiling at you. For the first time all day, a real smile breaks out on your face. Suddenly the walk home in the cold doesn't seem so bad.
So often in our lives, we get caught in a cycle of, wake up, go to work or school, come home, scroll through your phone, go to bed, and then repeat. In these vicious cycles, our society has forgotten hope! The hope of something more than just a day that repeats itself every time you wake up.
That is what the “you’re amazing seat” is all about to me. Breaking this cycle in order to bring a message of hope. A message that reminds people of their identity. It is so simple stupid! (or stupid simple depending on where you’re from). As little as the encounter might seem, it can have an immense impact, that I will probably never fully comprehend.
Sonder - the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own.
Coming to Hard as Nails, I wasn’t really sure what to expect. To be honest, I knew very little about Hard as Nails. I knew they worked out every day. I knew their main speaker was a short, jacked, Italian dude.
But beyond that, I had no clue what training was going to look like. I had no idea what God had in store for me when I decided to full send and become a missionary.
There are many things Hard as Nails does a phenomenal job of when forming its missionaries. Evangelization, service to youth, sensitivity to suffering, community, and the list could go on and on; however, at the end of the day, one of the most powerful things Hard as Nails has done for me has been to put into me a spirit of sondering.
Forgive me if I used that wrong, but at the end of the day, the “you're amazing seat” exercises this “sonder” which I am ever grateful for.
We never really know what people are going through! Some words of hope could have a greater impact than you know. Countless times I have stopped at a stop light and been struck with a moment of sonder. Everyone around me has a life equally as confusing and complex as mine.
By rolling down the window once in a while, to give some drive-by encouragement, you are allowing people to get outside of themselves. To realize there is hope outside of whatever cycle they might be in. That their identity does not reside in what they accomplish in a day, but rather who they are. And they are amazing because God made them this way.
The “you’re amazing seat” is just one of the many powerful ways Hard as Nails tries to communicate this message. At the end of the day, I pray that one of those homeless people or power walkers I yelled encouragement at is reminded of this message of hope in their identity and the power of God's love.
Isaiah 43:4 “Because you are precious and honored in my eyes and because I love you I would give nations in exchange for you and peoples in exchange for your life”
You are truly amazing, and you matter!
