Outlive Your Life_ You Were Made to Make a Difference - Max Lucado [22]
We both saw the man. I saw right through him. Stanley saw deep into him. There is something fundamentally good about taking time to see a person.
Simon the Pharisee once disdained Jesus’ kindness toward a woman of questionable character. So Jesus tested him: “Do you see this woman?” (Luke 7:44).
Simon didn’t. He saw a hussy, a streetwalker, a scamp. He didn’t see the woman.
What do we see when we see . . .
• the figures beneath the overpass, encircling the fire in a fifty-five-gallon drum?
• the news clips of children in refugee camps?
• reports of 1.75 billion people who live on less than $1.25 a day?1
What do we see? “When He saw the multitudes, He was moved with compassion for them, because they were weary and scattered, like sheep having no shepherd” (Matt. 9:36).
This word compassion is one of the oddest in Scripture. The New Testament Greek lexicon says this word means “to be moved as to one’s bowels . . . (for the bowels were thought to be the seat of love and pity).”2 It shares a root system with splanchnology, the study of the visceral parts. Compassion, then, is a movement deep within—a kick in the gut.
Perhaps that is why we turn away. Who can bear such an emotion? Especially when we can do nothing about it. Why look suffering in the face if we can’t make a difference?
Yet what if we could? What if our attention could reduce someone’s pain? This is the promise of the encounter.
Then Peter said, “Silver and gold I do not have, but what I do have I give you: In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk.” And he took him by the right hand and lifted him up, and immediately his feet and ankle bones received strength. So he, leaping up, stood and walked and entered the temple with them—walking, leaping, and praising God. (Acts 3:6–8)
What if Peter had said, “Since I don’t have any silver or gold, I’ll keep my mouth shut”? But he didn’t. He placed his mustard-seed- sized deed (a look and a touch) in the soil of God’s love. And look what happened.
The thick, meaty hand of the fisherman reached for the frail, thin one of the beggar. Think Sistine Chapel and the high hand of God. One from above, the other from below. A holy helping hand. Peter lifted the man toward himself. The cripple swayed like a newborn calf finding its balance. It appeared as if the man would fall, but he didn’t. He stood. And as he stood, he began to shout, and passersby began to stop. They stopped and watched the cripple skip.
Don’t you think he did? Not at first, mind you. But after a careful step, then another few, don’t you think he skipped a jig? Parading and waving the mat on which he had lived?
The crowd thickened around the trio. The apostles laughed as the beggar danced. Other beggars pressed toward the scene in their ragged coverings and tattered robes and cried out for their portion of a miracle.
“I want my healing! Touch me! Touch me!”
So Peter complied. He escorted them to the clinic of the Great Physician and invited them to take a seat. “His name, . . . faith in His name, has made this man strong . . . Repent therefore and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord” (vv. 16, 19).
Blotted out is a translation of a Greek term that means “to obliterate” or “erase completely.” Faith in Christ, Peter explained, leads to a clean slate with God. What Jesus did for the legs of this cripple, he does for our souls. Brand-new!
An honest look led to a helping hand that led to a conversation about eternity. Works done in God’s name long outlive our earthly lives.
Let’s be the people who stop at the gate. Let’s look at the hurting until we hurt with them. No hurrying past, turning away, or shifting of eyes. No pretending or glossing over. Let’s look at the face until we see the person.
A couple in our congregation