26-31Take a good look, friends, at who you were when you got called into this life. I don't see many of "the brightest and the best" among you, not many influential, not many from high-society families. Isn't it obvious that God deliberately chose men and women that the culture overlooks and exploits and abuses, chose these "nobodies" to expose the hollow pretensions of the "somebodies"? That makes it quite clear that none of you can get by with blowing your own horn before God. Everything that we have—right thinking and right living, a clean slate and a fresh start—comes from God by way of Jesus Christ. That's why we have the saying, "If you're going to blow a horn, blow a trumpet for God." 1 Cor 1 - The Message
Back in the day, I used to work at a place on the wrong side of the tracks in Macon, GA. How do you know you're on the wrong side of the tracks? Wait until one day when the train is in between you and lunch - then you'll get it.
Anyway, the area was light industrial, with added benefits like the city landfill and dog pound. On the way there, right before you'd pass under the railroad overpass, almost any day, you'd see a group of men waiting there, hoping to be hired as day laborers. Week in, week out, day in, day out they would be there. In the harsh summer, they'd be trying to find some shade, and in winter they'd be huddled around a fire in a 55 gallon trash drum. But they'd be there.
I never gave them much thought outside those extremes of temperature. Never wondered how they got there, or if they had families. Never really looked hard in their direction. Just remember someone telling me that you could stop by and says something like "I got 20 bucks I'll pay for some work today" and guys would climb in the back of your truck. I guess I suspected most were alcoholics or something. Back then it was hard for me to grasp what unemployment meant.
Then God allowed me to experience that, and also to get to know some folks like those as I worked in a ministry center that helped people in need with food, clothing, and some limited job placements.
So I'm reading Matthew's gospel today, getting ready for Sunday. We're focusing on the "red letter passages" of Jesus' words for now. But I always make sure we get the context - the setting might be in black type, but you need it too.
Jesus goes down to the lakeside - to what today would be the docks. It was an area back then much like the "Buzzard's Roost" was in Macon. Fishermen might need an extra hand or two some days, so men would congregate there hoping for a day's labor.
That is the absolute last place I would have gone to pick the men who would carry out the most important mission ever given to mankind.
I cannot separate that scene from the one in my memory. I think back at all the times I saw those men there, and there's just no way I would have looked to them for help in doing anything important.
No way.
None.
God, forgive me.
Pride's a funny thing. You can convince yourself that you are a good person, an ordinary guy. You can claim you'd never look down on anybody. Even cite your humble roots. I know I've written about being born in a mill village.
But just as soon as God's grace, His completely unmerited grace gives you what you need to "move up" in the eyes of society...
read this very carefully...
You also move away.
Away from your neighbor. Away from looking at people as Jesus did. Away from anything remotely resembling the good news. It's sin.
Man I hate it when the preacher becomes the preached to.
So I thought I'd share. :)
Grace!
David
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http://www.newhopevalp.org/
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