Thoughts on the T.

Get ready for a melting pot experience of all thoughts being regurgitated, essentially. This post is called "Thoughts on the T" since these are my thoughts from my ride on the Red Line this morning.

Yesterday, someone was asking me how I knew when it was safe to talk to particular homeless people, and when it wasn't (or something along those lines). And I was saying that I think I know intuitively, and that most of the time I don't feel afraid because I feel that God is protecting me, but sometimes I feel really scared. Today I was taking the elevator from the green line to the red line since I had all my stuff with me, and then a homeless guy got into the elevator with me, and even before the door closed I knew I felt scared. He started asking me for money and was smoking, and I said I didn't have any, and he proceeded to ask me about why Chinese people are so stingy, and is it a policy that Chinese people don't help a person out, etc. It was only like a 2 minute experience, but I felt really shaken up.

So then on the T I was praying to lift that anxiety to God, and I just felt like God was telling me that His heart for the homeless is not just for the nice ones, or the ones that I like, but that this man is His treasure, too. It really humbled me, though it didn't make it easier. I realize that even though I feel like God is growing my heart, my heart is still so small. Jesus had no fear that someone might harm him as he was loving on them. Not like me. Even when people were after him and wanted to kill him, it didn't deter him from spreading the good news.

And then also yesterday, someone shared a sin with me... in thinking about that, and about how God has been showing me much of my own brokenness (whether my own sins or simply things that just happened to me in my circumstances or whatever), and seeing the brokenness in the world around me, it makes my heart weep, but at the same time makes me see how much in need of a Savior we really are. Like that song goes, "Who, O Lord, could save themselves, their own souls could heal?"

The story of Jesus healing the man with leprosy strikes such a deep chord in me, and finally today on the T I discovered why. On one end, I am the leper... so disgusting and broken. And yet Jesus would come over and touch me and make me clean in his sight, not because of anything of my own, but because of his nature. It isn't even that I deserve to be blessed like that (because we know that what we do deserve is death), but Christ frees me from that brokenness that I may run around and praise and worship him. On the other end, I so desire to be like Jesus... to touch those who are too ugly for the rest of the world to touch or associate with or even look upon, and to heal them not by my power, but by Christ in me and through me, for his Kingdom and his glory.


Beautiful Savior. Though it doesn't even come close to saying how glorious you really are, Jesus.