The Least of These

This post has been copied from a blog I recently read. It was so impactful to me that I needed to share it here. Visit Least of These blog to read more.

God is Shuffling Along
He didn’t lift his feet, he slid them, as if skating on the concrete sidewalk.
Maybe he was old, but I couldn’t tell because he looked like a cave man, and it’s hard to read a cave man’s age.
Eyes looked out from sunken pools in his head, down at the ground where he shuffled.
And wild, long hair stuck out from all directions on his head. Some of it was matted.
I don’t know if he had lips. His beard had crept up his cheekbones almost to his eyes and crawled back down his face, past his neck, until it disappeared into his ragged coat.
From behind the wildness he mumbled.
I think he must have been saying, “Someone help me. God is in here somewhere, but no one can’t find him no more ‘cause he’s all crusted over and hid.”

God is Running Scared
Something was chasing him from up in the sky. Demons I guess.
He ran with a look of terror, and I thought in this heat that can’t be healthy because he’s old.
He was panting and sweating and grunting in terror.
He tripped, lost his balance and touched the ground with his hand. He didn’t fall, just stumbled and kept running.
Good thing, because I’ll bet those things in the sky chasing him might have caught up to him.
When he ran past I looked up to see what was terrifying him, trying to run him down so mercilessly.
Just blue skies. ‘Cept maybe those things from his memory. Demons from some war. Vietnam? Korea? Boyhood abuse?
I don’t know. But they had him running scared.He was too scared to talk, but I think he probably would have said, “Someone help me. God’s prints ha’ been swallowed up by all this fright and that terrible thing what happened to me long ago.”

Jesus Likes the Big Mac Value Meal
I once prayed walking to the McDonald’s in Santa Monica, “Jesus, I’d like to have supper with you.”
I stepped up to the counter to order and I saw him.
He was really skinny and ragged, but he did have that long hair, beard and mustache I had always imagined. Though I never imagined the body odor.
He was ordering just a cup of water.
“Would you like something other than water?” I asked.
“Sure.” He said. “I’ll have a Big Mac Value Meal. It’s number one.”
I knew this guy was Jesus because when we sat down to eat together he said right away, “You know, I’m sorta like Jesus. ‘The foxes have holes and the birds have nests but the Son of Man has no where to lay his head.”
I smiled.
“I have schizophrenia” he said, which is something I never knew about Jesus.
After dinner we tried to find him help, but it’s hard to help someone like that.
He’s alienated himself from everybody because he gets spooked by people easily.
“You can’t get close enough to see Jesus in me.” He says as he slips away, throwing me a suspicious glance. “He’s hidden here, and I don’t want no one to steal him.”

Then they also will answer, 'Lord, when was it that we saw you mentally ill and shuffling or scared or hungry, and did not take care of you?'

Matthew 25:45 (NRSV)
Then he will answer them, 'Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.'