I was hungry and you gave me no meal,
I was thirsty and you gave me no drink,
I was homeless and you gave me no bed,
I was shivering and you gave me no clothes,
Sick and in prison, and you never visited.'
Then those 'goats' are going to say, 'Master, what are you talking about? When did we ever see you hungry or thirsty or homeless or shivering or sick or in prison and didn't help?'
He will answer them, 'I'm telling the solemn truth: Whenever you failed to do one of these things to someone who was being overlooked or ignored, that was me—you failed to do it to me.' "
Matthew 25:42-45
That phrase "someone who was being overlooked or ignored" gnaws at me. I'm pretty good at overlooking people. I am especially good at it when the "overlooked ones" are lazy or dirty or just not my "type" of person. If I'm brutally honest, people have to deserve my help before I'm excited about giving it to them. Before you judge me, admit with me for a moment that when you see someone waste the help they've been given, you don't exactly look forward to helping them again.
Imagine my surprise when Christ reminds me that it is not just the deserving he expects me to help. Anyone who is hungry or thirsty or homeless or shivering or sick or in prison---anyone being overlooked or ignored---they are the ones I am called to feed, host, cover, serve, and visit. "I don't want to," I tell Him. "You don't have to want to," he replies (oh dear, he SO borrowed that line off of my Dad!!).
I'm not sure what this is supposed to look like in my life, but I am sure of one thing...I want to spend my days figuring it out because I know that I know that I know that I never want to hear Christ say to me, "That was me---you failed to do it to me".
1 comment:
Working as a nurse has taught me a lot about this very topic. I've learned a lot of tough lessons. Serving someone who I deem "not worthy" truly strips away any joy that God intended. He redefines what it means to serve by his very nature. Our king came with dirty feet, little clothing and nothing desirable that we should seek Him. Why? To reach down to me, and you. To meet us where we are- filthy, ragged and truly undeserving. When I get that difficult patient assignment (the drug addicted mom, the curser who complains constantly, the ones that smell so bad it's hard to breathe), I imagine what kind of assignment I was to Christ before He saved me and I want to pour myself out for that patient, even if they never know why.
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