A Ragamuffin of Sorts

Last night as I drove home from a friends house, the Lord really grabbed my attention.

I was on a main road, driving back to my cozy little house as I drove under an overpass. To my right, I saw a man with a shopping cart and a couple of bags full of what appeared to be all of his belongings. He was laying on the ground sleeping. I've seen this man there for the past few weeks and I haven't had a second thought about his situation. Last night I found myself thinking "that must be humiliating..." and then in true girl fashion, the tears began to fall because I was making such a hasty generalization. Now, I'm not sure that this man woke up one morning and thought to himself, "I'd really like to live under I-540, and sleep on the cold ground..." No, I don't think that was his thought process at all.

I, my friends, make snap judgments and it is really hard for me to go back on them once they enter my mind. I really dislike this, because it robs the beauty of a story created by God, the intricate details of a journey that we are each on. When I am making these judgments, I am in essence, trying to write a portion of a strangers story and that's not my place. I am not anyone's savior- and sometimes I forget that, because I like to 'fix' and make things better.

In that brief moment as I drove under the overpass, I chose to write a portion of this man's story and title it 'humiliating.' I was critical of his current situation, and in my head immediately decided that God couldn't use that portion of Walnut Street to write a man's beautiful story.

THEN, I got home and was doing some reading before bed, and Brennan Manning got my attention with this thought:

"A person, in real sense, is what he or she sees. And seeing depends on our eyes. Jesus uses the metaphor of eyes more often than that of minds or wills. The old proverb, "The eyes are the windows of the soul," contains a profound truth. Our eyes reveal whether our souls are spacious or cramped, hospitable or critical, compassionate or judgmental. The way we see other people is usually the way we see ourselves. If we have made peace with our flawed humanity and have embraced our ragamuffin identity, we are able to tolerate in others what was previously unacceptable in ourselves."

In Acts 26:17-18 Jesus is talking to Paul, and he says...

'delivering you from your people and from the Gentiles—to whom I am sending you to open their eyes, so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.'

My prayer from all of this, is that my flawed self would remember that I am just that...flawed, but through God's grace I am made whole again. That I would look to each person as a gift, with a story, and praise God that the journeys we are on have intertwined for a little while, because (thank goodness) the Lord is a better writer than I am.

Blessings.
C