We yield to those in bigger vehicles when we merge into traffic. We yield to the opinions of the higher-ups at the workplace. We even yield the floor to the person running the meeting, allowing someone else to put limits on our time. The ones with more power and influence are the ones to whom we yield. There’s no big surprise here.

But here is a different story. Here the drivers who own the road yield to the ones on foot, giving way for the smaller and more vulnerable. On this green strip between one side of the street and the other, the powerful pause to let the pedestrians pass.

There’s a deeper truth in this, this mandate to stop in our trajectories and defer to the lower and slower, the strangers we will never truly meet and may never set eyes on again. This is yielding not because someone else is more powerful and can make us do it, but because someone is more vulnerable and cannot make us do a damn thing. If we cannot let go of our own machinations long enough to stop and let someone cross the road, we have lost some precious part of humanity. But if we can, if we realize there’s a whole big world full of God’s beloved well beyond our own plans and desires, then every time we stop to let someone cross, if we look, we’ll catch a glimpse of heaven on earth. Perhaps the person we yield to is Jesus the stranger among us; perhaps angels wait on the side of the road to offer us a blessed chance to yield.

Perhaps it’s not only a stairway that goes to heaven, but a green crosswalk as well.