The World Needs You

I sat surrounded by limp babies blushed with fever, several women crying in agonizing pain, and more than a few who smelled of alcohol and life lived on the street.

The young lady who sat beside snuggled her sick newborn baby and broke up with her boyfriend over the phone. The man sitting in front of me snuck sips of beer from his backpack. Another cussed into his cell phone saying, “I’m going to break her a**. She took all the drugs and the money.”

I pinched my mask tight around my nose and pulled my girl and my purse close as if I could keep us all sanitized.

But I couldn’t. I sat in a petri dish of disease and darkness. My eyes swept the devastation in front of me, and I was disgusted.

I was disgusted until the man in front of me took out his wallet and counted the 5 dollars he had to his name. And the young woman beside me told her boyfriend, “Oh no, you aren’t nasty.” (Which, frankly, is another way of saying that he is, indeed, nasty.) And a young lady crawled into the ER all alone wailing in pain.

And then my heart broke in compassion. Remember Jesus looking out over Jerusalem and weeping?

He touched lepers. Spoke to the outcast. Dined with tax collectors. A sanitized life was not his goal.

The world needs us! Actually, the world needs Jesus, but because we are the hands and feet of Jesus the world needs you and I.

Sitting in the ER was not the way I planned to start our New Year, but I will take this lesson with me into 2022. So go forth sisters, filled with compassion. Look for lepers to touch, sinners to dine with, and society’s outcast to share a conversation. The world needs you because the world needs Jesus! ❤️