Look Deeper... See Jesus

?Have you ever been blindsided? Something happened, but you never even saw it coming?Sometimes, it's just a mild disruption. Like accidently running into someone because you are paying attention to something else... its a minor isturbance, but you didnt see it coming. Sometimes it's more than a mild disruption. Sometimes it is a catastrophe when you don't see something coming. Like when you get into a car accident, how many of us say, " that guy came out of nowhere!" But then there is something even deeper. When we don't see something coming, it can be more than a mild disruption, and more than a catastrophe. It can be long, slow decline. It can be deterioration and decay over weeks and months. That may be the most dangerous thing not to see. A long, slow deterioration. like a wet spot we see on a wall, or floor or whatever, we think nothing of it, until someone comes in and tells us we have a leak, and it has led to mold... I dont know, i couldnt think of a better example... but i think you get the picture. It was something that looked small on the surface, like something that just didnt really matter, ut underneath, the mold was growing slowing. We just never saw it coming! But wecould have! Had we looked more carefully, we could have seen that coming. all these things, we never saw them coming, but we could have! had we not been looking at something esle when walking ,we never would have run into someone, had we been paying complete attention to our driving and not to the cell phone, or radio, we would have seen the car coming, and had we taken that little water mark more seriously, the mold wouldnt have been there. America is being blindsided. As a nation, things are happening that we never saw coming. But we could have. We never saw 9/11 coming, but we could have. Certain voices were warning us about the growing tide of terrorism. It should have been no real surprise. NOT to say that it wasnt, or that this isnt a stretch for an example, so all you political folk...dont hurt me! :) We never saw the stock market's steep decline coming, probably because we didn't want to. We wanted to ride that bubble as high as it would fly. we didn't see the stock market fall coming, but we could have. Lots of people predicted the bubble could not last. America is being blindsided. As a nation, things are happening to us that we never saw coming. But we could have. We never saw massive illiteracy coming. We are astonished that huge numbers of our children cannot read or write. We never saw that coming, but we could have. We didn't turn off the TV and offer them books to read. We didn't make sure that they heard correct English. We didn't sit insist that they write something as simple as a thank-you note. Massive illiteracy – where did that come from? We never saw it coming. But we could have. We never saw urban poverty coming. We thought that if we would move to Washington( just the city i picked due to the fact its the nations capitol) from the countryside, we could leave behind sharecropping and labor, we could work for the government, maybe run our own businesses. We hought we had left poverty behind. We were not prepared to discover that in the nation's capital, in the very shadow of the places where bureaucrats spend billions for warheads and space shuttles, people die of starvation and beg for dimes. We never saw that coming; but we could have. We never saw illiteracy coming, we never saw poverty coming, and we never saw abused children coming. We were taken care of when we were young, and we hope we have taken care of our own children.( for those of you older than I who have kids... that was for you... but for the majority who do NOT have kids yet... its ok, you get the point) But if we have not looked carefully, we have not seen children who have been beaten, teenage girls who have been pushed into prostitution, or young men for whom violence is a way of life. We never saw, and maybe still do not see, what it means for someone to spend eternity without Christ. It is not only that in this present life you are stripped of meaning if you are not in Christ. It is also that out there in the not yet there is hell if you are not in Christ. But some of us are walking along our merry way and are not seeing that either. We never saw lostness coming. But we could have. America is being blindsided. We are experiencing things that we never saw coming. Interesting that the Bible anticipates this. In Jesus' powerful passage about the last judgment, He says that we didn't see reality around us. He speaks of those on His right hand, who fed the hungry, clothed the naked, visited the sick and the imprisoned, but they didn't see something. What did they not see? They didn't see Jesus Himself in all those situations. And then He speaks of those on His left hand, who failed to feed the hungry, who brushed off clothing the naked, who never got around to visiting the sick and the imprisoned, but, guess what? They didn't see either! They didn't see Jesus in any of those situations. Neither one saw deeply enough into what was coming! Some did what they could to help, and that's good. Simple human compassion is a great thing. But they didn't see all there was to see. They didn't Jesus in those they were serving. Others did nothing, and I'm afraid that's just the way human sin operates. Doing nothing is our favorite sin. But the issue is that whether they helped or whether hey did not help, everybody failed to see Jesus! Nobody saw reality! Nobody really saw the whole issue! Let me suggest a few things we might see if we look deeper and see Jesus in those people. If we look carefully, and see Jesus in America's needs, we will learn that there is something more than spirituality AND that there is something more than religiosity. We will learn to be whole persons. there are two kinds of people who fail to see Jesus in the needs of others. Some of them are very spiritual; and some of them are very religious. Those are not the same things. But whether you be spiritual or whether you be religious you may be missing the truth! Some people are very spiritual. They speak of being spiritual without being religious. They mean that they are interested in feelings. They get a buzz from singing or from hearing uplifting music. They appreciate the beauty of a sunset. They read inspiring meditations. They get all warm and fuzzy. They say they are spiritual. But don't give me that "church" stuff. Don't want to get involved in church politics, can't deal with committees, not about to fuss with procedures, don't want to give money – oh, that's what churches always want, money – so just let me be spiritual without being religious. But that misses reality. You won't see real people if you are just spiritual, out there in the clouds somewhere. However, other people are religious without being spiritual! Other people give themselves to committees and policies, budgets and buildings, all the hardware that goes intorunning an institution. They show up like clockwork on Sundays and sit through worship dutifully. They read the rule books to figure out why not to do something new. They are religious to a fault. But ask them to pray? Ask them to study the Bible? Take on a ministry? Sit with a lonely person? Hear the heartbeat of a desperate soul? No way! That's for the pastor, isn't it? Some of us are religious but not spiritual. But if that's you, you won't see reality, any more than the guy who is spiritual without being religious. Jesus taught us that we need to serve human needs, and we need to see Him in all things. We need to be practical and we need to be spiritual. If you look at Jesus in others, you will become a whole person. Second, if we look deeper and see Jesus in the last, the least, the lost, and the lonely, it will teach us to identify with people in need and not to distance ourselves. If we learn to see Jesus in those who are struggling, it will teach us that if we expect to make a difference, we need to be where they are, we need to feel what they feel. I am persuaded that much that is wrong with America is that we are still practicing segregation. You know about segregation. But I am not talking about the old thing of legal segregation. I'm speaking of everyday life segregation. And not so much racial segregation, although that is still with us, but social segregation. We separate ourselves into ghettoes where we can live without seeing others who are not like us. Some of us don't know any poor people. We don't live where they live, and, even if we do, we avoid dealing with them. We segregate ourselves from harsh human needs. We ride the subway to work, and it goes underground! You won't see poor people there! We hunt for freeways that will whisk us to our destinations without our driving through desperate communities where young angry people hang out or tired, old-before-their-time men stand around. We pull our children out of the public schools because we want them to have superior opportunities, but it means that other children don't have the benefit of learning from our children. It is segregation, and we have chosen it! Why, we even have churches now that are pulling out and segregating because, they dont want to be like the "mega" church, or whatever. But looking at people and seeing Jesus at work in them will teach us to identify, to be there with them. I have talked to homeless people since being here at school in the city, nothing too major, but just a hello, how is your day type thing. Yo would be suprised the joy they get in their eyes because they arent over looked. Or I paid bus fare for a homeless man who was just trying to get to a shelter for the night but hte driver was abot to kick him off the bus becase he was short money, he just gave me this look of why? and I just smiled and told him to have a seat, that he would get to the shelter. Maybe that's not for you. But I tell you, if you at least get to know somebody on the edge, and see Jesus in the last, the least, the lost, and the lonely, you will never be caught not seeing it coming. In fact, if we look deeper and see Jesus in the last, the least, the lost, and the lonely, it will not only teach us to become whole persons. It will not only teach us to understand that they are just like us and we like them. But seeing the needs of America and seeing Jesus there will also teach us that if we are going to deal with needy people, we have to deal with them both physically and spiritually. We have to recognize the whole range of their needs and be there for them where it counts the most.