Trees Walking

Confession time.  The other day I passed - probably for the hundredth time - a homeless man who has staked out his spot on a corner near my house.  And probably for the hundredth time I avoided any eye contact with him as I sat at the red light.  Another homeless person; another one who refuses to sleep and eat at our Visalia Rescue Mission and instead chooses to live off handouts from passing motorists.  I did not have pleasant thoughts about this man, even though I know that most homeless people who choose not to stay at our Mission are most likely addicts, alcoholics or have emotional or mental illnesses.

This last week I have been reading through the Gospel of Mark and came across this passage:

"...some people brought a blind man and begged Jesus to touch him.

He took the blind man by the hand and led him outside the village.  When He had spit on

the man's eyes and put His hands on him, Jesus asked:  'Do you see anything?'

He looked up and said, 'I see people; they look like trees walking around.'

Once more Jesus put His hands on the man's eyes. 

Then his eyes were opened...and he saw everything clearly."  Mark 8

I am convicted by the Word of God once again.  In some sense the way I have seen this man is as a 'tree walking' - one of many 'trees' I pass by in my life.  People who are just 'there' on this path I call my life.  Some of them annoy me, some of them irritate me, but most are people I ignore as I go about my day, trying to avoid contact or interaction with them.  And yet the 'least of these' are the very ones for whom our Savior died.  And so I prayed; thanking God for giving me spiritual sight when He called me as His child.  But then praying and asking that He would once more put His hands on my eyes so that I too, as the man in Mark's Gospel, would not see people as 'trees walking' but would see everything clearly.  I don't know what I will do when I pass this homeless man again this week.  Will I hand a dollar from the safety of my car window?  Will I tell him that Jesus loves him?  Or will I pray to Jesus asking Him to open this man's eyes as He has mine.