“And the King will say, ‘I tell you the truth, when
you did it to one of the least of these my brothers and sisters, you were doing
it to me!’
— Matthew 25:40 (NLT)
I met Jesus today. I
meet him most days. He is not the exact same person each time as the Scripture
says, but what it is about him that’s important is unchanging – yesterday,
today, forever (Hebrews 13:8).
You meet him most
days, too. We all hardly recognise him. Looking to get on with our lives we
miss him, who is right in front of us.
This is not about ‘spending
time with Jesus’, but it is very much about seeing Jesus in our midst – in the
person right before us – that one who is hungry, thirsty, naked, a prisoner,
and the one who is sick.
The actual Jesus I
met today was a gentle and very kind soul, which is common for someone who also
had deficits. But not all Jesus’s we meet are the same; they all have something
going for them that makes them into a Jesus in Jesus’ viewpoint.
They are needy. They
need to be served. And those who are so often serving really deserve to be
served.
We are all, of a
sense, needy, but there are those who are instantly needier than we will ever
be.
We don’t have to
think too much for examples of such need; the Bible highlights widows, orphans,
the sick and lame, the destitute, the one down on his or her luck.
Every time we
encounter someone more vulnerable than we are we encounter Jesus.
Whatever we did to him or her we did it to Jesus – if we failed to listen to or
cater for their needs. Whatever we did for
him or her we did for Jesus – to actually
meet their needs in creative and caring ways.
These are the works
of our times.
We cannot go back
and redo our lives after we’ve passed into the ether. The thought of dying and
becoming ethereal is surely the biggest motivation to do what we can do now.
We can be Jesus to
the vulnerable person we meet if we are focused on serving those in greatest
need. Heaven will not help us if we insist on serving the powerful and
privileged. Heaven will only bless us if we seek to serve those who are
vulnerable – those we may not want to serve.
Jesus is for the
person exuding none of his power. But his power is very real in them.
We don’t expect an
encounter with Jesus in an especially broken person, but that’s exactly where
we find Jesus; it’s because within this especially broken person is everything
that will test and reveal our heart and our faith.
© 2015 S. J. Wickham.
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