(COMMENTS: awaken@Sonrisen.com)
I'm sitting at a red light impatiently trying to figure out how to get around this big Salvation Army truck in front of me with a simple message painted on its side: “Doing the Most Good.” It's an inconvenient portal to heaven...
There’s a great Salvation Army mission in my city. But it’s very far removed from the suburbs or even the center of life in our region. In fact, it’s been at least three years since I drove by that place.
It took a truck at a red light to get me thinking about them. Recently, the bell-ringer was outside a store for the Salvation Army Christmas collection. It took that to get me noticing them.
When I get too removed from the places of suffering, God has a way of getting my compassion needle to move in His direction.
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If God has to put a homeless man or woman in front of me to remind me of both suffering and the results of sin, He is kind enough to do that for the both of us.
No one wants to surround himself with suffering. In America, we have two convenient oceans that separate us from a lot of the world’s hardship.
The reason why it’s dangerous to get too far removed from suffering is that we can easily forget the poverty and disease that our personal sin cost Christ. He didn’t keep Himself in the safety of His nice neighborhood in heaven.
PORTAL TO HEAVEN: By way of traffic lights, trucks, ringing bells, hollow faces and other means, God compassionately strategically places compassion portals - even if He has to stop us with the literal metaphor of a red light.
You know the generous grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. Though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty he could make you rich…All they asked was that we should continue to remember the poor, the very thing I had been eager to do all along.
2 Corinthians 8:9 (NLT), Galatians 2:10 (NIV)