I just passed a homeless man on my walk. I looked him in the eyes. He didn't look back, he was looking at the ground. In his eyes I saw a lot of pain and suffering.
I just think about his life. When he was a kid and a teenager, he never once thought "One day I'm going to be homeless." NEVER! I wonder how he grew up, what his childhood and youth was like. I wonder what kind of dreams he had. What he wanted to be when he grew up.
He's probably had a wife and maybe some kids. What happened to them? What happened in his life that led to homelessness?
The body of Christ is supposed to take care of him.
No one is supposed to be wandering around every day from place to place trying to find their next place to sleep or their next meal. THAT IS INJUSTICE.
And then I thought of how those are the people Jesus wants sitting at the front of his table with him at the wedding feast. He wants them to eat all they can hold of the abundant food and he wants to talk and laugh with them and hear their stories and tell them a story- and call them out of where they've been into that story, into a new life.
We are supposed to do more than look them in the eyes. We are supposed to do more than smile at them or say hi to them. We are supposed to do more than give them a little food or money.
We are supposed to LOVE them. We're supposed to be their friend.
Jesus doesn't want merely our hands, our resources, our posessions, our food/money/clothes. All of that is good, but he wants our HEART. "...And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing." (1 Corinthians 13:3
If our heart is not in it- if we're just tossing a few dollars their way because we'll feel guilty if we don't, then we don't really have love. If we're just giving them some food or buying them a meal because we feel sorry for them, then we don't really have love. Compassion is a wonderful thing. But compassion and love are two different things.
Compassion is an OUTFLOW of love. If you don't really have love, your compassion is just pity.
From the place of love, we are to lead them to Jesus and to salvation. This is the end-goal of all reaching out. Souls will be saved. Lost ones will come into the Kingdom as sons and daughters.
And broken, lost, oppressed, hurting, suffering, abandoned, fatherless, hungry, needy, dying people will take their place at the table for the wedding feast. They will know the sacrifice of Jesus that enables them to know the Father's love.
"Come, all you who are thirsty,
come to the waters;
and you who have no money,
come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
without money and without cost.
Why spend money on what is not bread,
and your labor on what does not satisfy?
Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good,
and you will delight in the richest of fare.
Give ear and come to me;
listen, that you may live.
I will make an everlasting covenant with you,
my faithful love promised to David."
Isaiah 55:1-3
Jesus paid for the ones that the world doesn't even take a second look at - the ones who are overlooked and even despised and oppressed.
