Unplugged

You create a stir in me each time I pass you by. Watching you sit there, I struggle to acknowledge your presence. There are times I really want to, there are times I feel obliged to, and there are times you make me wish I never saw you, only to hurry by.

When I turn around and see them drop a coin in the metal can, I hate myself for failing to have done the same. I wonder the extent of Christian kindness and compassion I am called to have, I wonder if I had any left. I see you around every corner, I would love to give a bit to each of you. I wonder if I can possibly do it all the time. When I see you in a moment of reality, I wish so much to tell you there is a God who loves you despite your plight. I wonder if anyone had ever tried to share that with you- and will you retort with scorn.

You make me feel ashamed of my shopping bags, challenged the wisdom of my resource utilization. You make me feel indignant of my comforts, questioned the fairness of life. You make communism seem like a pretty solution, perhaps the key to Utopia.

But yet you also help me see His grace in giving the basics in life, the undeserved comforts that I take for granted, His love in the daily bread provision. Your lot in life is different from mine, but we are all the same in His eyes. Your struggle with His goodness may be the physical needs in life, mine is of a different kind. But yet in our situations He is drawing us to Christ, so my prayer for you is this- that you will experience His abundance in the poverty of your situation, that you will know Him and be fully satisfied in your soul. And may the good Lord also give to you, what you need in His time.