Just like everyone else, I have my good days and I have my bad days. Last week was a series of those bad days. But I am not going to go in depth about my "trials" because talking about "problems" never gets anyone anywhere -- but straight to depression. Instead I'd rather share one incident that turned my very trying week into a "re-acquaintance with Jesus" and a very powerful lesson on humility.
In the last three years, I stopped calling myself a Christian and I stopped going to Church and just study my Bible at home or watch Joel Osteen on TV-- lately, he's the only televangelist (or evangelist), who makes sense to me. This is my opinion and I don't expect to be attacked for having a personal opinion. It's my life. Right? Anyways, I woke up Saturday morning and right away I knew this wasn't going to be the best day of my life. But this never stopped me before, so I headed out to my favourite Ethiopian restaurant to meet my friends for our usual Saturday "girls gotta have some fun" afternoon. When I got there the restaurant was closed -- this has never happened in the 2 years I've known this place. I started to call my friends to find out where they where at, and found out my cell phone battery was dead (forgot to charge the night before). So I found a payphone and called them. They told me where to find them. On Saturdays we all don't drive cars and instead take the metro transit (sub-way)-- it's more fun because you get to meet real folks and see the real Toronto and flirt a little bit, you can't do that in your car on the highway. When I am with friends this is great fun, but being directionally challenged (if you ask me which of my hands is the left and which is the right, I have to think about it first, that's how bad!), I knew I was in trouble. I ended up taking three wrong streetcars (too proud to ask for directions from the driver, what would other passengers think??) . I was completely lost with no idea where I came from or where I was going to. And by the time I got off the third wrong stop, I was all up in here (head) and my usual calmness was beginning to crack. Now, I am standing there waiting for the fourth streetcar (probably another wrong one) and this obviously very drunk young man (it's 3 p.m. in the afternoon!!) comes up to me trying to chat me up. I wasn't already doing too well managing my emotions, so I gave him a scowl and moved away. He was too drunk to care and kept hitting on me and asking for my telephone number -- I completely lost it!
Just from his physique and something about him told me he was African. Those guys don't know the meaning of rejection (and in some ways, I like that). But for some weakness of mine, I seem to have less patience for Africans acting like they lost control of their lives (like drunk in the middle of the afternoon). May be that's because I feel they are "making me (African) look bad". And (arrogance) let the poor guy have it.
Using African "sting like a bee" language, I told him he was a waste, his parents would hide their faces in their hands if they saw him like this, he was the reason others didn't have much respect for Africans... blah, blah, blah.
His demeanor suddenly changed and he murmured "you have no idea, you just have no idea" but I wasn't playing life coach just then and kept hammering at him for "coming all the way here (Canada) to act like a chicken without a head".
I was looking at him directly in the eyes and really giving him "the look". He began to cry. In my culture, they say when a man cries, he is "standing up from the inside". Of course not every man -- if he is always crying, all oversensitive and always complaining about his feelings being hurt-- he's just not a man. But if he has this moment of "human weakness" it stirs the "nurturer" in a woman's soul.
Suddenly, "I" didn't matter to I, me, and myself. He mattered. I asked him if I could buy him coffee and he agreed. So we sat down -- I hate alcohol breath but this wasn't about me anymore.
He sipped his coffee in silence for about 5 minutes. I told him I was done talking and if he wanted to talk, I would "hear him". He slowly started to tell his story and kept talking for almost an hour without stopping. By the time he was done, we were both crying and holding hands tightly. People in the coffee shop might have thought we were lovers "making up".
We talked for another 2 hours, then he walked me to the (right) streetcar. I gave him my business card and told him to call me. He simply said "you don't even know that you just saved my life" and for the first time since we met, he smiled. He had that light-up-my-world Obama toothpaste ad smile going on. And before your mind even goes there, "NO, I don't have a crush on Obama". I was fathered by a politician who abandoned me at childhood, and then I "married" a politician -- that's ENOUGH for one lifetime.
Sitting in the streetcar, I couldn't help but ask "Now, what was that all about?" First, the restaurant was closed. Then my cell phone battery was down (I could have called my friends to ask for the right streets car), then I get into three wrong streetcars, and as if that isn't enough already, a drunk African man hits on me on the open street? Then I "saved" his life?
Even the least perceptive person (which I am not) could tell that an unseen hand had led me here to this experience. I was still mulling over what just happened when I heard that still voice I've known for years say, "WHATEVER YOU DO TO THE LEAST OF THESE MY BROTHERS, YOU DO IT UNTO ME"? Suddenly it all made sense. I found myself thinking "That was you? An African man drunk in the middle of a hot afternoon? What the hell were you thinking hitting on me?"
I wonder how many people who call themselves Christians today would recognize Jesus Christ (the son of God) if He came to them in a loose dress-like robe, worn-out strap sandals, beard and hair unshaven, a turban-like headgear and speaking radicalism on an open mountain slope to a crowd (of unbelievers, thieves, adulterers, drunkards, the crippled, the blind, the sick, the demon-possessed, the hungry etc)? Nothing that fits into today's " typical Christian's profile". Just a ragged poor looking maiden's son; a carpenter by trade whose clothes are donations/pittance and who eats whatever He is given and sleeps wherever the night finds Him.
No fancy Armani suit and tie, no "gospel accent", no "speaking in tongues", no sleek microphone, no camera crew, no bible head thumping, no sinner-witch hunting, no "prosperity BS", no million dollar book deals, no neat tight "Christian" families driving in expensive cars to multi-million dollar churches, sitting in phews, "holy-faced", hands up in the air singing "sanctified sacrifice" and murmuring holy-nothings to other holy-faced Christians (God forbid they rub shoulders with unbelievers, thieves, drunkards, drug-addicts -- sinners!).
I wonder how many people who call themselves Christians today can say "I met Jesus, and I instantly recognized Him?"
Just the Son of God with the powerful message of LOVE.
I didn't recognize Him instantly, but I know I met Him that Saturday afternoon.
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