Love in Action
On this Valentine’s Day evening, when the world is celebrating Love, I couldn’t shake the pain I saw deep in the eyes of the homeless as I was out running errands today. They are someone’s daughter or son, sister or brother, mother or father, someone’s friend…. they had someone somewhere. The cars whisk by and no one seems to care. I have met many people who stand in judgment, and condemn them for being where they’re at.
In both of these situations, it isn’t the poverty, and it isn’t the wealth that made them stand out, but rather the people that were around them - shunning or fawning.
Lord, help me to see everyone through your eyes. Lord, help me to see you, in every pair of eyes that I look into. Lord, help me to love the unlovable. Help me to love the outcast and rejected. Guard my heart Lord. Keep me from acting in transactional ways towards others. Help me to love like you do. Help me to See.
Keep vigilant watch over your heart; that’s where life starts. Don’t talk out of both sides of your mouth.
Proverbs 4:23 msg
Wealth attracts friends as honey draws flies, but poor people are avoided like a plague.
Proverbs 19:4 msg
Of all the times Jesus spoke of it, none is more compelling to me than the passage in Matthew 25 when Jesus describes the actions of those welcomed into his Father’s kingdom: “For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me … Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me” (Matthew 25:35-36, 40)