“Least of These”
When life jack-hammers our souls into pulp, it is easy to lose perspective and sneak into a self-absorbed cocoon, isolated from other’s pain, joy, happiness, and suffering. Perhaps we think our emotional cocoon is a safe place-where no one can hurt us. Or, we believe it is a healing place where we can recover from the blunt traumas we’ve endured, but in reality it becomes a barrier that keeps us from the one place we can regain our equilibrium-community.
Like the urge to scratch a mosquito bite, we are often compelled to do irreparable damage to ourselves and others when we are hurting. Coming out of spiritual isolation can seem impossible to those who find comfort in their solitude. Destructive patterns become familiar, even comfortable, but they must be broken.
We walk into His house of worship longing for His touch, needing His comfort and pleading with Him to notice our problems. We strain to hear, but are deafened by the silence. Where is He? Why won’t He answer me?
Then we hear the call of Jesus. “Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.” (Matthew 11:28) We long to break free and feel his warm embrace, but how do we come to Jesus? Where are His arms to embrace us?
You find his arms attached to “the least of these” he speaks of in Matthew 25:45. You find His arms when you assemble with your faith community. I am “the least of these,” and so are you; when we embrace and love we are experiencing more than human kindness-it is more than that-it is a Divine touch. When one of “the least of these” ministers to another one of “the least of these” God shows up, and His touch will heal the soul.
Jim L. Wilson, Fresh Start Devotionals (Fresno, CA: Willow City Press, 2009).
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