If It Got The Attention Of Jesus, Should It Get Yours?

Let’s take a moment to think about what really got the attention of Jesus during his time on earth. He didn’t spend time with the rich, the upstanding citizens, or the “cool crowd”. When Jesus was walking the earth as the physical embodiment of God, the people that caught his attention were the poor, the widows, the orphans, the homeless, the sick, the “sinners”, and the broken. If these things got the attention of Jesus, shouldn’t they get your attention even more so? Think about it; the only man to ever walk the earth that had the right to look down on others, to judge them and disassociate himself from them, didn’t choose to do so. One of my favorite examples of this is when Jesus is dining at the table of a Pharisee, a man who is supposed to be “law abiding and righteous”, and a sinful woman (you can only imagine the life that this woman led if her sinfulness was known throughout the town) saw Him and began weeping over his feet. She cried so much that she could wash His feet with her tears. She began to use her hair to wipe his feet and when she finished she poured perfume on them, not just any perfume, perfume that would have cost a year’s wages! The Pharisee looked down his nose and said, “If this man were truly a prophet, he would know who is touching him and what kind of woman she is-that she is a sinner.” How often do we have the eyes of the Pharisee? How often do we choose not to help those that really need it for fear of what others may think, or the stigma that is associated with them? Galatians 5:6 says, “The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.” Jesus chose to heal lepers by touching them, when he could have easily just spoken healing over them. He did this to show his true love for them. In the time of Jesus, touching a leper was absolutely despicable, but He chose to do it anyway because really loving someone involved touching him or her, even if they were unapproachable. If the only perfect man to ever live spent His time loving on the poor, the sick, the fatherless, and the widows, shouldn’t we? I’m not talking about superficial kindness, not dropping bread crumbs from your ivory tower thinking that you’re truly helping people, but really diving in and loving strangers, sinners, homeless, orphans, and widows. Jesus loves these people so much that he actually identifies himself with them. In Matthew 25:40 Jesus says, “Whatever you have done for the least of these, you have done for me.” The best human definition I could find for this type of love and compassion comes from a man named Henri Nouwen and these are his words, “The word compassion is derived from the Latin words pati and cum, which together mean, “to suffer with.” Compassion asks us to go where it hurts, to enter into places of pain, to share in brokenness, fear, confusion, and anguish. Compassion challenges us to cry out with those in misery, to mourn with those who are lonely, to weep with those in tears. Compassion requires us to be weak with the weak, vulnerable with the vulnerable, and powerless with the powerless. Compassion means full immersion in the condition of being human.” It is a challenge to us all; will we come down from our ivory towers? Scratch that, will we tear down our ivory towers and use those bricks to build for the homeless? The next time you see a commercial that shows hungry orphans will you change the channel because you can’t bare to watch, or will you try to understand their pain, and take it upon yourself to make a difference? You don’t have to change the world, but you can show God’s love through little things like taking the neighborhood kid, whose father is a mystery, to the park, or spending time with the old widow down the street. The joy you will find in these things will surpass any other that you have ever felt. God bless.