Tag Archives: invisible people

Daily Riches: Those Annoying Children (Michael Card and N. T. Wright)

Posted on by under Being the Beloved, Humility, Insiders and Outsiders, Jesus the Savior, Learning Your Proper Place, The Upside-Down Kingdom

“Some of the Passover pilgrims who are traveling along with Jesus and his disciples to Jerusalem have brought their young children with them. They ask Jesus to do a very rabbinic thing: to lay his hands on the children and impart a blessing, a berakah . . . . His disciples, who already seem to have forgotten his last lesson about humility, try to prod the parents away. Their rabbi is too important for such trivial things. . . . [But] The children themselves are parables that need to be listened to. People will not be allowed to enter the kingdom of God unless they can enter innocently and unashamed to receive it freely.” Michael Card

“Luke emphasizes how young the babies were that people were bringing to Jesus. Jesus’ rebuke to the disciples rings out still today in a world where thousands of children are treated as sub-human, as disposable commodities. These are the ones, he says, who most truly show us what it means to accept and enter God’s kingdom. There is something about the helplessness of children, and their complete trust of those who love and care for them, which perfectly demonstrates the humble trust he has been speaking of all along. Jesus doesn’t offer a romantic or sentimental view of children; he must have known, in the daily life of a village, and through growing up as the oldest of several children, just how demanding and annoying they can be. But he sees to the heart of what is means to receive God’s kingdom; it is like drinking in one’s mother’s milk, like learning to see–and to smile!–by looking at one’s mother’s eyes and face.” N. T. Wright

“Isn’t this the carpenter’s son? Isn’t his mother’s name Mary,
and aren’t his brothers James, Joseph, Simon and Judas?
Aren’t all his sisters with us?”
Matthew 13:55-56a

Moving From the Head to the Heart

  • Do you “see” children, or are they just like “background noise?”
  • What is it that you can learn from children?
  • Can you still yourself in God’s presence, and gaze into the face of Jesus, like a child gazes into its mother’s face? Why not try this each day for a month, and see what happens.

Abba, I admit my helplessness. It is only you who can bring me into your kingdom.

For More: The Spiritual Life of Children by Robert Coles

Daily Riches: Treating the Poor as Honored Guests (Dorothy Day, Robert Coles and Thomas Merton)

Posted on by under Loving Well, The Poor and Disenfranchised

“One afternoon, after several of us had struggled with a ‘wino,’ a ‘Bowery bum,’ an angry, cursing, truculent man of fifty or so, with long gray hair, a full, scraggly beard, a huge scar on this right cheek, a mouth with virtually no teeth, and bloodshot eyes, one of which had a terrible tic, she [Dorothy Day, in her Catholic Worker’s soup kitchen] said,  ‘For all we know he might be God Himself come here to test us, so let us treat him as an honored guest and look at his face as if it is the most beautiful one we can imagine.’”  Robert Coles

jesus-in-the-breadline-p-eichenberg

“Into this world,
this demented inn,
in which there is absolutely no room for him at all,
Christ has come uninvited.
But because he cannot be at home in it,
because he is out of place in it,
and yet he must be in it,
his place is with those others for whom there is no room.
His place is with those who do not belong,
who are rejected by power because they are regarded as weak,
those who are discredited,
who are denied the status of persons,
tortured,
excommunicated.
With those for whom there is no room,
Christ is present in this world.”
Thomas Merton

“[God] will rescue the poor when they cry to him;
he will help the oppressed, who have no one to defend them.
He feels pity for the weak and the needy, and he will rescue them.
He will redeem them from oppression and violence,
for their lives are precious to him.”   
Psalm 72:1-14
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Moving From the Head to the Heart

  • Do you share God’s “pity for the weak and the needy?” Have you ever treated a “Bowery bum” as an honored guest? If so, what happened?
  • Christ’s place is “with those others for whom there is no room.” He identifies himself with them. He stands with them in solidarity (Mt. 25:40) Do you attempt to treat such people as you would treat Jesus?
  • Imagine being “denied the status of persons.” Imagine what standing with and loving such a person could do for her. Who do you know who is “denied the status” of a person?

Abba, open my eyes to the invisible. Open my heart to the unwanted. Open my hands to the needy.

For More: Raids On the Unspeakable by Thomas Merton

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These “Daily Riches” are for your encouragement as you seek after God and he seeks after you. I hope you’ll follow my blog, and share it. My goal is to share something of unique value with you daily in 400 words or less. I appreciate your interest!  –  Bill (Psalm 90:14)

“I practice daily what I believe; everything else is religious talk.”

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