MONDAY MATTERS - Emma Cooke

Monday matters.

I've got a question for you, church.

Can I ask you this? Do you like people watching? Do you know what I mean by that? I love people watching.

There's nothing better than when I just get space and silence.

I put the phone down and I've normally got a good cup of coffee in front of me and I just get to watch the world walk by.

Yeah, people watching? I've always been fascinated with human behaviour.

I love looking at body language, expressions on faces, and watching people and imagining the world that is around each person.

We've all got a world attached to us, don't we? Well, on a Monday morning earlier this year, I got the rare space to do that.

And I was sitting at a cafe, enjoying a long black, a good long black, And at this point in time of our year, it's been fairly hectic on the news.

I mean, there is a lot happening in our world right now.

Would that be correct? I grew up in a family of news junkies.

I don't know if anybody else grew up like this, but we would start with channel 10 at five o'clock.

We would move to channel seven or channel nine, usually to the ABC 24 show where we'd come back to then a current affairs and blah, blah, blah.

And that was like every night in our household.

Thank the Lord I don't watch anywhere near the amount of news now.

because it's pretty negative and it's pretty hectic.

But as I was people watching this Monday morning, conversation with God and myself started to develop as I noticed faces and people and interactions.

I'm seeing focused faces, busyness, anger.

I was watching a couple to my right have a disagreement and way more anger in that conversation than I felt comfortable with.

And I started to say to God, God, surely you intended more for humanity than this.