Just where He seems most helpless

I had lunch today with a friend of mine. He's a different kind of guy, actually. Mentally he's not all there. He probably hasn't had a shower in a few years. He can never look you in the eye, and is not usually interested in much more than what he's going to have for his next meal.

But as we talked over lunch today he asked some pretty amazing questions. He wanted to know about what it'll be like when Jesus returns. He thought it would be pretty weird if he was watching a hockey game and Jesus just knocked on his door and said, "Let's go". I talked to him about what it meant to follow Jesus, to ask for His forgiveness and leadership. My friend had prayed that prayer years ago. He just thought it was interesting to talk about.

The more time I spend with my friend the more I feel like when he's around I need to take off my shoes. In the midst of his mental difficulties, his hygienic forgetfulness, and his paranoia about who is out to get him, there is a small piece of holy ground. Jesus loves this guy and when I'm with Him I feel almost like I'm in the presence of Jesus. It's pretty amazing. God chose the weak things to shame the strong, the foolish to shame the wise. I think my lunch partner reminds me of that. It's definitely a Christmas type of message. Think about it. The stable didn't smell too good. And Joseph was probably wondering where their next meal was coming from. Mary was exhausted from travel and labor. And yet God shows up. Frederick Buechner wrote about this. He said,

"Those who believe in God can never, in a way, be sure of Him again. Once they have seen Him in a stable, they can never be sure where He will appear or to what lengths He will go, to what ludicrous depths of self-humiliation He will descend in His wild pursuit of man. If holiness and the awful power and majesty of God were present in this least auspicious of all events, this birth of a peasant’s child, then there is no place or time so lowly or earthbound but that holiness can be present there too. And this means that we are never safe, that there is no place that we can hide from God, no place where we are safe from His power to break in two and recreate the human heart because it is just where He seems most helpless that He is most strong, and just where we least expect Him that comes most fully."

God comes fully when I sit with my friend. May He burn that lesson into my mind so that I don't pass Him by as He sits on the street.