Are you Jesus?
This story serves as a yardstick for me in my Christian pilgrimage.
Subject: Are you Jesus?
A few years ago a group of salesmen went to a regional sales convention
in Chicago. They had assured their wives that they would be home in plenty
of time for Friday night's dinner. Well, as such things go, one thing led to
another.
The sales manager went longer than anticipated and the meeting ran
overtime. Their flights were scheduled to leave out of Chicago's O'Hare
Airport, and they had to race pell-mell to the airport. With tickets in
hand, they barged through the terminal to catch their flight back home.
In their rush, with tickets and brief-cases, one of these salesmen
inadvertently kicked over a table which held a display of baskets of
apples. Apples flew everywhere.
Without stopping or looking back, they all managed to reach the plane in
time for their nearly missed boarding. All but one. He paused, took a deep
breath, got in touch with his feelings, and experienced a twinge of
compassion for the girl whose apple stand had been overturned.
He told his buddies to go on without him, waved goodbye, told one of them to
call his wife when they arrived at their home destination and explain
his taking a later flight.
Then he returned to the terminal where the apples were all over the
terminal floor. He was glad he did. The 16 year old girl was totally blind!
She was softly crying, tears running down her cheeks in frustration, and at
the same time helplessly groping for her spilled produce as the crowd
swirled about her, no one stopping, and no one to care for her plight.
The salesman knelt on the floor with her, gathered up the apples, put
them into the baskets, and helped set the display up once more. As he did
this, he noticed that many of them had become battered and bruised; these he
set aside in another basket. When he had finished, he pulled out his wallet
and said to the girl, "Here, please take this $20 for the damage we did. Are
you okay?"
She nodded through her tears. He continued on with, "I hope we didn't spoil
your day too badly." As the salesman started to walk away, the bewildered
blind girl called out to him," Mister...." He paused and turned to look back
into those blind eyes. She continued, "Are you Jesus?"
He stopped in mid-stride, and he wondered. Then slowly he made his way to
catch the later flight with that question burning and bouncing about in his
soul: "Are you Jesus?"
Do people mistake you for Jesus? That's our destiny, is it not? To be so
much like Jesus that people cannot tell the difference as we live and
interact with a world that is blind to His love, life and grace.
If we claim to know Him, we should live, walk and act as He would. Knowing
Him is more than simply quoting Scripture and going to church. It's
actually living the Word as life unfolds day to day.
You are the apple of His eye even though we, too, have been bruised by a
fall. He stopped what He was doing and picked you and me up on a hill called
Calvary and paid in full for our damaged fruit. Let's start living like we
are worth the price He paid.
posted by Kok Weng at 1:34 PM
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