Good morning everyone,
Yesterday morning I had to go give blood for tests as part of my annual health check-up. I went to Quest Diagnostics off of Governors Drive. I went in, signed my name at the window and went and sat down in the waiting room. It had a large glass window facing the street , and there where about 15 people in the waiting room. I was there about 5 minutes when outside the window, a woman he was apparently homeless pushing a shopping cart of stuff walked up to the window. She was dressed sweat pants, a jacket, and winter hat, far more clothes than was needed on a 100 degree day. She parked her cart in front and came in the door. Everyone’s eyes in the lobby was looking at her. She signed in and handed the nurse some kind of if Medicaid form, then turned around looking for a seat to sit in. Every ones eyes in the waiting room dropped or turned away from her, hoping that she would not sit next to them. As fate would have it she walked and sat down next to me.
It was apparent to me and others, by the strong smell of body odor that was filling the air around us she had not bathed in awhile. After she sat down, she bent over and started digging through a large beach-bag type bag she brought in with her filled with items. She pulled something out and when I looked over I noticed it was a Bible. I looked over and saw she had turned to 1 John chapter 4. Her eyes caught mine looking at the Bible and she asked me if I read the Bible. I said yes mam and I love 1 John. She said God has been convicting me that I am not loving others like I should. That I am becoming judgmental and I need to love others more freely. I said mam, thank you so much for that. It is a sermon myself and everyone in the waiting room needs to hear. My name was called by the receptionist and I got up and went into the office.
I encountered Christ this yesterday morning, and he smelled and looked like nothing I expected or preferred him to look like. But then again, I have found he never does.
“Dear friends, if God so loved us, then we also ought to love one another. No one has seen God at any time. If we love one another, God resides in us, and his love is perfected in us. By this we know that we reside in God and he in us: in that he has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent the Son to be the Savior of the world…If anyone confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God resides in him and he in If anyone says “I love God” and yet hates his fellow Christian, he is a liar, because the one who does not love his fellow Christian whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And the commandment we have from him is this: that the one who loves God should love his fellow Christian too.” 1 John 4:15-16, 21-22.