You live in a bubble. We all do.

What should have shocked us most about the most recent election cycle was, I think, our own shock. Not the rhetoric, the outrage, the circus. Our own shock.

I count myself among the stunned. The people who winced at the angry words, who stood in awe as so much ugliness played itself out, day after day after day.

And then, on Election Night, I sat stunned as I saw something, suddenly, as clearly as I can see my own reflection in the mirror.

I live in a bubble.

We all do. The news reporters and election analysts certainly do; they could barely catch their breath as the events of the night began to unfold along a storyline completely contrary to the one they expected to be telling. Reality suddenly refused to march lockstep with the worldview in which they were immersed.

And the next morning, as the reactions began filtering in, others woke up to the same understanding. My Facebook feed was full of friends wrestling with this truth. “This is not the country I live in,” a Clinton supporter lamented. “Who are these people?” a third-party voter asked. “Why don’t you understand this?” wondered one who had cast a vote for Trump. In one fell swoop, all across America, people were waking up to the fact that was was normative to them, that what they knew to be right, was not shared real estate. Common ground, it turns out, is not always common.

I have realized my own bubble more and more as I’ve gotten older. Moving so often, from country to country or even to new regions of the U.S., will do wonders in making you aware that your norm is a fairly narrow slice of life.

But we all live in a bubble. All of us. Many of them are our own constructs. Some are the work of God himself. If think on it enough, you can begin to sort your bubble from the rest. Maybe you are a white, Christian, homeschooling mother of a large family. You’re married. You’re not rich, but you are able to live in a place where you are safe at night. You’ve never heard a gun shot in your neighborhood, unless it was the sound of a deer hunter in the woods somewhere miles away. You’ve never needed public transportation, wondered if government aid could help you keep food on the table for your kids, or had to explain to your kids why Daddy is in danger of being deported.

That’s a lot of bubbles right there. For good or for bad, it’s a lot of bubbles.

And there are more. There is the bubble of the missionary, who doesn’t understand why everyone doesn’t give. There’s the bubble of the childless by choice, who are discomfited at the idea of overpopulation. There’s the feminism bubble, the racism bubble, the “all those college educated people are morons” bubble, and the “everyone I know does drugs” bubble.

If you start a list of worldview bubbles, you open up an endless Venn diagram of the intersections of faith and life experience and expectation.

So what’s the point? Are we all damned to live in our bubbles, safely surrounded by our like-minded brethren who provide us an amen corner with every witty meme we share showing our superiority? Are we vindicated in pointing out our rage, our frustration over the “others” dismissal of our place?

I don’t think so. While I see some good in the bubbles– raising safe children, enjoying fellowship, being encouraged– I also see the danger in them. At some point, God wants us to peek past the veil of who we are and see, with His eyes, the hearts of the people who are not like us. Maybe they are the least of these. Maybe they are the most of these. I can’t tell you what your experience will be, but I can tell you that He created them all.

Romans 2:11 reminds us that God does not play favorites, and neither should we. Reconciling our own bubble with the greater world is a vital part of the Christian experience. Finding kinship beyond the barriers of color, class, and community give us His eyes as we experience the joys and pains of this world. Empathy is often the hard-won child born of a willingness to listen with our whole heart, not just the head on our shoulders.

Speaking for myself, from my own bubble, this election reminded me that I need to do a much better job of hearing the voices around me. I resolve to try.

You live in a bubble. We all do.

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