I spoke with a lady on the phone today who came to our Back-To-School Outreach Sunday at CFC’s North Campus and got backpacks for 2 of her three kids. This phone call wrecked me. When we do events like these we really don’t know anything about most of the people that come to our church. We (as a church) don’t know what they have got through, where they have been, how they are struggling. Nor do we really understand the impact I know we have have on their life. We just try to love them right where they are at.
This woman and her husband are essentially homeless. They both work the night shift at a local company and the kids have a daycare they spend the night at. They (the parents) then nap on the floor at the daycare for a few hours until the kids wake up and then they play with the kids around town (park and library) until they drop them back off at daycare and go back to work. They just wanted to call and ask that we would pray that they would get a rental house they are looking at. I prayed for her.
She then said.. “umm my boyfriend was so impacted by your church that we want to come back. But umm… we are not married and i’m not sure about the rules of your church.” “Can we come.”
As I tried to not to cry right there on the phone.. I told her to please bring her beautiful family back to our church on Sunday. That we LOVE them… She said they would be there.
I cant wait to see what Jesus is going to do in the life of this beautiful family. He’s going to bring beauty out of everything they are in, I know it. I am convinced that reaching the people Jesus came for is always a beautiful mess. Loving people is messy. Loving people can be offensive. Loving people is always costly.
I am so thankful to be a part of a church that is willing to embrace the mess in the lives of people so that Jesus can have HIS way in THEIR lives.
Jesus said things like, “whatever you have done to the least of these, you have done to ME.” Matt 25:40, “and I came to seek and to save that which is lost.” Luke 19:10
May we always endeavor to reach out to and treat the least as if they are Christ Himself. Because in the most beautiful of ways, Jesus has made them to be.