then you throw in some more reading material (my daily devotional) with the following thought:
"the glory of the Lord is the beauty of his character. it is risen upon you when you realize it, even though on earth you can do so only in part...the glory of the Lord is also risen upon you when you reflect that glory in your lives; when in love, patience, service, purity, whatever it may be, you reveal to the world a something of the father, an assurance that you have been with me, your Lord and Saviour."
i have been reminded of the importance of being aware of God's constant presence. and the constant awareness of the presence of Lord, his beautiful character, and his gracious and merciful attitude towards me ought to serve as a constant reminder: i am commanded to imitate this holy, loving, beautiful, humble, lowly, servant king, Jesus.
Jesus, the man who looked the downtrodden in the eyes. who stopped to speak to the beggars and prostitutes. and not to say, "repent or burn in hell!" but to say, "you are welcome in the house of my father. i know what you've done, but receive my grace and i do not condemn you."
this man saw incredible value in every individual person he spoke to, and most of those he chose to speak to were the ones society at large (religious devotees included) ignored entirely.
for whatever reason i do not encounter many "extreme opposition" moments in my life...i'm not often slapped or cursed at or persecuted...very rarely jailed or beaten or run out of town...and these are the situations we most often associate with Jesus and his disciples. when we think of acting biblically, we often gear ourselves up to face an angry mob with a serene Christ-like-ness or shun with a courageous "get behind me satan!" the overt temptations that will scream at us, "LOSE YOUR VIRGINITY! GET WILDLY DRUNK!"
but what we are most often faced with are ignored and undervalued checkers at the grocery store, a lonely woman sitting by herself on a bench, quiet self-haters standing off to the side at a social event. our temptations whisper to us with quiet nudging, "ignore that guy, he got himself in that situation...you don't have to put up with this lady's incompetence, you have things to do!" and we not only neglect to yell our fervent cry at satan, we generally don't even realize that we've been assaulted or tempted...we don't realize we've been overcome by an angry mob we didn't even see.
these are the moments when, i'm fairly certain, if we were fully aware of God's constant presence and Christ in the "least of these," our behaviours and responses to people--or really just our awareness of their existence--would be vastly different. hopefully we would be vastly more Christ-like. instead of waiting for the angry mob to cause us to ask, "what would Jesus do?" we would stand in line behind a smelly man, in front of a woman whose shopping cart keeps hitting our rear, waiting for a checker who is obviously new or else extremely slow, and think, "what would Jesus do?"
we would probably find ourselves turning around with a loving smile and talking to that woman. we would quietly pray blessings over the stinky man in front of us (Jesus died for the stinky, too). and when the time came we would make very sure that the checker knew we considered him better than ourselves (as paul exhorts), asking how his day has been, speaking a word of encouragement.
we would probably find ourselves, in light of this constant awareness of a loving God whose Spirit has made us His dwelling place, being more aware of the people around us who have "no beauty or majesty to attract us to [them], nothing in [their] appearance that we should desire [them]."
we would probably find ourselves washing people's feet.
the glory of the Lord is risen when we reflect the glory of His character in our lives.
"when in love, patience, service, purity, whatever it may be, you reveal to the world a something of the father..."
when we choose to live in the character traits of God, we make the presence that we are hopefully aware of plain for all to see.
my starting point, my challenge-to-self, has been just to notice. if i don't even notice people, how can i begin to love them like Jesus?
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