The Panhandler

He has called and asked me to meet him in a town mid way between us. He was the Chairman of the Nominating Committee of a professional organization to which we both belonged. He wanted to interview me as a possible candidate for President of the organization for the upcoming year.
We had a pleasant lunch and the interview went well. As we exited to the street, a panhandler approached us. I handed the man a few bucks. The Chairman suggested to the panhandler that he get a job. After the panhandler wandered down the street, the Chairman began to try to take me to the woodshed for encouraging the “bum”.
I was not nominated by the committee.
Since that time, I have had several such conversations with others on the same topic. When I stop at a traffic light and see a person holding a sign, I try to always stick a few bucks out the window. That generally results in a discussion when I have a passenger. I am amazed at how negative people can be about this.
No, I am not an easy touch. No, I don’t believe the money is always used for food.
But, here Is what I do know: there was a time when that person was a wonderful, beautiful baby in his or her Mother’s arms. That mother believed that baby might one day be President, or become a doctor who discovered a cure for cancer. Not once did that mother believe that baby would one day be on the streets begging.
I don’t have a clue what put that person there, but I do know, “but by the grace of God, there go I”.
Jesus’ disciples had a touch of that willingness to dismiss hurting people too in the early times. In Luke 9, a crowd formed to see Jesus, hear Him teach and perhaps receive a healing touch from Him. As the hour grew late, the disciples said to Jesus, “send them away so they can go get food and make arrangements for a place to spend the night”. The verb “send” is an imperative. They were gentling instructing Jesus what to do.
Jesus said, “You feed them”. They replied they had no food except the lunch they had taken from a young boy, and they did not have enough money in the bag.
These were the same men He had recently given supernatural power to heal people.
Jesus then proceeds to break the fish and loaves and had the disciple distribute it to the hungry people.
Later, these men would learn that Jesus was their source of strength, their source of joy, the savior of their souls, the shepherd of their spirits, the lifter of their heads, the maker of their ways. They would learn that His presence and power in their lives was deeply and authentically transformational.
They would learn that He will never demand something without first delivering the power; that He does not require what He has not yet released; that He does not seek what He has not already supplied; and that He never orders what He has not yet ordained.

For me? I will just keep on handing out a few bucks along with a word of encouragement and leaving the judging to the One who knows the facts. I think that is What Jesus Would Do!

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