Jesus Walked Among Us
By David Brandt BergThough Jesus was rich, for our sakes He became poor, that we through His poverty might become rich. Jesus not only had to come down and live amongst us, but He had to be one of us. He had to become a member of the human community.
He came as a meek and quiet, weak and helpless baby. He not only adapted Himself to our bodily form, but also conformed to the human ways of life. He was human. He got tired. He got hungry. He got weary. He was subject to all these things, even as we are, yet without sin, that He might have compassion upon us, know how we feel, know when we're footsore and weary, know when we've had enough.
God sent Jesus to become a human being in order that He might better reach us with His Father's love, communicate with us on the lowly level of our own human understanding, and have more mercy and patience with us than God Himself. Think of that!
"He knows our frame; He remembers that we are dust" (Psalm 103:14), having worn that frame Himself, suffering in it, and dying in it for our sakes. He came down here to our level that He might take us with Him back up to His. What a miracle--all for our sakes!
"Never judge a man until you've walked a mile in his shoes." If there was anyone who knew all about that, it was Mother Teresa. After having lived among the poorest of the poor in Calcutta, India, for nearly 30 years (and she would do the same for nearly 20 more), she was awarded the 1979 Nobel Peace Prize. She began her acceptance speech with the words, "Life is life." She went on to explain that all human beings are special and of great worth, no matter who they are, and that only when we have learned to respect that fact can we begin to help them improve their lives.
Most people would be happy to walk a mile in a pair of plush designer shoes or top-of-the-line athletic shoes, but how many would want to step into a poor laborer's shoes? When I was living in Uganda, East Africa, I found a discarded pair of shoes that became to me a symbol of Africa and its sweet-spirited but struggling people. It was apparent from the cement splatters that their last owner had been a construction worker--a human cement mixer. Like many others I observed there, he no doubt worked long days in sweltering heat with no protection against the sun and had only a couple of sticks of raw sugar cane for lunch. He had worn those shoes until the holes in the soles had gotten so big that the shoes no longer served their purpose. When there was no point in wearing them one more day, he left them for me to find. It wasn't his intention, of course, but those shoes put my own petty problems into perspective. No, I didn't actually walk a mile in them or even try them on. Just looking at them was enough to make me appreciate my many blessings, including the casual, comfortable shoes I usually wear.
There wasn't any question in my mind when, some time later, a young man knocked at my door, asking for help. He had won a scholarship to a boarding school, but there was one requirement he couldn't fulfill--he didn't have any shoes. He asked if I had an extra pair I could give him. The ones I was wearing at the time fit him quite nicely, and that was that. No, one simple act of kindness didn't make me a saint on the level of Mother Teresa, but I do believe that in that moment I experienced from the inside out a touch of what caused and kept her doing what she did all those years: "The love of Christ compels us" (2 Corinthians 5:14).
Curtis Peter Van Gorder is a member of the Family International in the Middle East.
