Waking Up To The World

“When a poor person dies of hunger, it has not happened because God did not take care of him or her. It has happened because neither you nor I wanted to give that person what he or she needed. In the poor we meet Jesus in His most distressing disguises.”  - Mother Teresa

Author: Noel Yeatts

I was reminded of the power of that thought, “Jesus in disguise” when I saw a recent story in the news. It was about an Episcopal church in Davidson, North Carolina, that became home to a very controversial statue. The statue is of a shrouded, obviously homeless man lying on a park bench by the church.

The face and the hands are obscured, but when you come closer, you’ll see the nail-pierced feet of the man lying on the bench . . . and you realize that it’s Jesus.

Needless to say, the statue caused quite a stir in the community—which is known for being very wealthy. Some claimed that it was undignified to portray the Son of God as a hobo, saying that it demeans the church and the neighborhood. One man even said it was “creepy.”

From a distance, some church members thought the statue was a human and reported the “homeless man” to the police, complaining of the nuisance and asking for him to be removed.

That’s right. Somebody called the cops on Jesus.

But I love the words of the minister of the church who said, “We believe that that's the kind of life Jesus had. He was, in essence, a homeless person. This is a relatively affluent church, to be honest, and we need to be reminded ourselves that our faith expresses itself in active concern for the marginalized of society."

The truth is, just like this church community, we have all been lulled into a deep sleep. . .  and we need to wake up.

It has been said that if you save one life, you can save the world. When I was just a teenager, I met a little 5-year-old boy on the streets of Brazil—a street child. His father had abandoned him, and his mother could not afford to care for him. He slept on a bench and had no clothes or shoes. He was dirty and hungry.

Meeting this young boy changed my life. It taught me an important lesson: I may not be able to save all the hurting children in the world, but that is not what God was asking me to do . . . I could make a difference for one. Years later, I have never forgotten.

Now that he is all grown up, I have often wondered what his life would have been like had we not met—where would he be, would he have survived? But what I have wondered more is what my life would have been like had we not met that day . . . maybe I was the lucky one. (You can read more about his story in my book Awake: Doing a World of Good One Person at a Time).

It is true that the needs of our world today can be overwhelming. And the easy thing to do is live with our heads in the sand. We turn the channel, look the other way, and fill our lives with so many distractions that we never really have to face reality. And when we do face these issues, even for a moment, all we seem to do is feel guilty. But that does not change reality, and it does not make the problems go away. And if all we do is feel guilty, then we have really missed the point.

John Stott puts it this way:

The horror of the situation is that our affluent culture has drugged us; we no longer feel the pain of other people’s deprivations. Yet the first step toward the recovery of our Christian integrity is to be aware that our culture blinds, deafens and dopes us. Then we shall begin to cry to God to open our eyes, unstop our ears and stab our dull consciences awake, until we hear, and feel what through his Word he has been saying to us all the time. Then we shall take action.

The pain, poverty, sickness and hunger that I have witnessed around the world can almost be too much to bear at times. I have talked to women abandoned by husbands who left them infected with HIV. I have hugged children who have lost parents due to war or disease leaving them all alone. I have cried over young girls who have been raped and had their innocence stolen. And I have held babies in my arms on the brink of death from malnutrition.

But what I have also seen is incredible hope. I have seen lives rescued, restored, and redeemed.

You see, I believe that if we will live our lives awake to the needs of the world—if we will embrace the injustices that we see—that is when we can begin to restore hope. Because, it’s no longer about handouts and charity. It’s not about feeling guilty for our blessings.

It’s about justice and compassion. It’s about rescue, restoration, and redemption.

It’s about hope . . . hope that changes everything.

To learn more or to order your copy of Awake, visit noelyeatts.com