Divine Appointments

    Divine appointments. They can happen anytime and any place. Today I was driving home from the Dr's full of joy to have heard our baby's heartbeat (it's a miracle that never gets old!). As I approached a traffic light, I saw a man with a cup standing in the median which isn't unusual in that spot. The car in front of me suddenly jerked in to the next lane, and I got so aggravated when I saw the light was still green and another car had stopped in the middle of the road. There wasn't a chance to switch lanes, so I waited behind the car. The window rolled down, and an arm waved over to the man in the median.. as he got closer my heart sank. This wasn't just a man, but a young man, barely old enough to be out of high school! The same arm that waved him over now held out a bag full of food and a drink. They also exchanged words, words I could tell weren't just small talk or conversation. The light changed from red to green again, and we were finally on the move. As I stepped on the gas pedal, I hear the words from my favorite musical sang out from my ipod, "I always dreamed my life would be, so different from this hell I'm living. So different now, from what it seemed. Now life has killed the dream, I dreamed."  

     So many times I see these people, sometimes I give them change.. other times I roll up the window like the rest of the people around me and pretend I don't see them. I make up my mind that they are lazy, and fill myself with the cushion of the stereo-type others seem to go by. But really, God slammed me this morning in my own ignorance. I don't know their situation. I don't know their story. I started to wonder what it was like for this young man's mother when she first heard his heartbeat. What did she envision for her son's future? What did she hope he would be? What did she hope she could provide for him? There's a chance she could have died, or made choice that spiraled her life out of control. She could be sick, and this could be his only way of helping at home. She could be a God-fearing woman, whose son got mixed up in the wrong things and she's praying for him everyday. Whatever his story is, it began the same way everyone's did, the joy of a heartbeat, with the miracle of life. 

     Humbled and full of compassion for this young man, I choked back tears all the way home and gave him the only thing I had to give; prayer. I pray that these moments are the ones that embed themselves not just in to my memory, but in to my soul. To keep that compassion alive and not quell it. Why? Because the more numb we make ourselves to the compassion of Christ, the harder our hearts become to the things He has called us to.   I tell you the truth, when you refused to help the least of these my brothers and sisters, you were refusing to help me.-Matthew 25:45

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