Living in the Spirit
June 28, 2014
Scripture Reading: Matthew 10:40-42
‘Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. Whoever welcomes a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward; and whoever welcomes a righteous person in the name of a righteous person will receive the reward of the righteous; — Matthew 10:40-41
One of my goals in life is to see the Christ in each person I encounter. I must confess I have to work really hard at this and sometimes I slip up and sometimes I go for days without it even crossing my mind. What I have discovered though is that if someone is vexing me in some way, God’s little reminder often goes off and a message pops into my head from Christ saying Here I am, see me?
It may have been as selfish as wishing the person in line in front of me had gotten her coupons out before the cashier finished checking out her cart load. It may have been while watching one of the multitude of campaign ads currently running when someone is espousing something with which I totally disagree or more likely over simplifying something that is exceedingly complex. I hate 30 second sound bites. It may have been when I hear on the news about one more senseless killing in a school, in a mall, on the street. I don’t need a lot of help seeing Christ in victims. It is perpetrators that fall from my grace, but not from God’s.
Welcoming, truly welcoming someone entails accepting them as a child of God just as they are. I doubt if anyone ever entered my mother’s house who was not offered a comfortable place to sit and some type of refreshment even a glass of water. When I was five or six a very poor family that lived near us stopped at our house to get my dad’s assistance in welding a broken piece of equipment. Mom invited the mother and the children into the house and gave the little girls the free paper dolls that had come with my hair permanent to play with. I was mad about that but knew better than to say anything. After they left, Mom gathered the paper dolls up and threw them in the wood stove. I was more than mad then! She explained to me that the girls had something called impetigo, a highly contagious skin condition, and that she burned the paper dolls to protect me from getting it. In my mother’s mind it would never have been right to not give the children something with which to play. She saw the Christ in everyone.
Prayer: Lord, open my eyes to see the Christ in everyone. Amen.
All scriptures are quoted from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicized Edition, copyright 1989, 1995, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of American. Used by permission. All rights reserved.