A couple of weeks ago, I received an email from a missionary friend who works in Romania.  As always, he's been busy.  The bulk of his letter was devoted to the time he has been spending among the gypsy population of the country.  Marginalized and forgotten by most of the nation, the gypsies live largely alone, toiling away, farming as if they were still living in medieval times, gathering in communities whose primal structures have not changed for thousands of years.
     What does my friend tell the gypsies?  God is present in their lives, he says, and God cares about them.  God wants to be their friend.  God remembers them.
     Many gypsies respond eagerly.  Yet in the crowded and bustling streets of Bucharest, words like this fall unnoticed.  People do not believe they need a divine friend.  They do not care whether God remembers them.  They have all the friends they need.  Eternal memory is irrelevant.
     This is not to say that we must be poor and forgotten to truly appreciate the claims of Jesus.  Far from it.  It is to say, however, that the more with which we fill our lives, the less we think we need anything outside of them.  The more we have today, the less we think we need tomorrow.  It's difficult to imagine anything beyond us.
     But that's my friend's point.  To the gypsies, he says there is someone for them, and to the citizens of Bucharest he says there is someone for them, too.   They just need to think more realistically about the meaning and import of their contingency and fragility in a wondrous but indifferent universe.
     To wit, apart from an externally driven point, why are we really here?