Those who are sickly you have not strengthened, the diseased you have not healed, the broken you have not bound up, the scattered you have not brought back, nor have you sought for the lost; but with force and severity you have dominated them. They were scattered for lack of a shepherd and they became food for every beast of the field and were scattered. -Ez. 34:4-5
I am a student of people, a watcher, perceiver and it often ends up breaking my heart.
There is a lady at the gym I work out at and I have noticed her many times because she seeks to be noticed. You see, she is very beautiful and unfortunately she knows it. She's blonde, full figured and flirty but in a subversive way. She is also married or at least she wears a big diamond on her hand. I see her float around the gym pretending to work out and making sure she is positioned near the nearest male in heat or at least the nearest male that will give her attention. For awhile I was annoyed by her preening, her perfectly positioned stretches, her bouncy hair and overly perky breasts for a middle aged woman.
Generally the type of woman I seek to avoid but today I saw something else.
As she was talking to some guy near me, I noticed on her upper arms were multiple bruises, perfectly positioned where a man's angry hands would grasp in a moment of violence.
Instantly the woman before me turned from Delilah to Tamar, from temptress to victim, abuser to abused and my heart was instantly opened to the reality before me. What I had judged as a sleazy attempt to get strokes in the midst of a hormone charged room, was really more of a broken whisper masked in the only way this cursed beauty understood.
The beautiful have their very own curses.
While some hearts are starving for the light of affection...some are overexposed and burned to a painfully blistered level. Beauty attracts beasts like an evening light calls bugs from the dark in a suffocating swarm.
Such women often become food for the beasts in our culture and are forced, dominated and severely mauled by the devouring spirit that seeks to scar the beauty of the earth. The lion-like devil that seeks out the vulnerable, the weak, the needy…the broken who have no shepherd.
In that moment I sensed the good Shepherd who as the book of revelation says is full of eyes, penetrating through her defenses and examining the wounds of her soul. He sees all our bruises, diseases, our brokenness and how lost we all really are. In that moment compassion again baptized my eyes and turned water to wine at the glimpse of a simple bruise.
This rainy morning my prayer goes out to this daughter that she would find healing in the hands of the Good Shepherd.
3 comments:
Thanks for sharing that story bro. It is humbling to consider what we miss when we see people without our Christ colored glasses. In II Corinthians 5, as Paul is describing the ministry of reconciliation that God has given him, he says in v. 14 that it is Christ's love that compels him and that he will regard no one from a worldly point of view, as he once viewed Christ himself. Lord as we live and move in the places we are, help us to see what you see.
-Dan
Praise God for His revealing light and compassion to allow us to see those around us as He truly sees them. I echo both of your prayers. May I see those people around me as Christ sees them, not as Scott sees them. Oh what a different world it would be if we as the Church did this more often in our day to day lives.
Neue
I guess this is one of those moments when you really understand the meaning of a log in your eye. We live in a world where what you thought was commonplace, but we can't let those thoughts keep us from expecting more from people. Sometimes people will surprise us, and sometimes they will make us the fool. Certainly something for us all to think about when we judge with our eyes, without knowing truth.
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