Staring in the Eyes of Jesus

While we wake up for the day, many of have been or are just getting ready to go to sleep. It's 12:20 AM in the States and 6:20 AM in Poland. Today we get to go see Jesus...again.

For some he will be seen in the eyes of orphans whom eagerly await our return today. For some he will be seen in women being protected from domestic violence. I will see him today in a disabled man who has spend the good part of 20 years in bed and can't get into his wheelchair for the bedsores that cover his body are too numerous and painful. He spends his days eating, smoking, drinking various kinds of liquids (alcohol partly). But he always lights up when we have come into the room to work on his tiny flat.

The flat is drab and full of furniture. It's on the bottom floor of a 4 story building that is very much WWII era, full of graffiti as most building in Lodz. The living conditions are poor and dangerous but you never hear a complaint...only gratefulness for a few people in his life that check on him daily.

Yesterday I wanted to get to know him. I am the only English speaking person on the small team I am on and I let the interpreter know that I wanted to talk with him about his life and hopefully about God. Instead, the interpreter got sick and I was left to lead a team with hand gestures and smiles. Disappointed I went to work. While scrubbing a wall so filthy and smelly from all kinds of accidents and incidents, I was spoken to by God, "As you do to the least of these, you have done to me." This was Scripture that I have read before but never truly experienced. It was perhaps a few seconds after I heard the voice that I looked over at the man...and stared into the eyes of Jesus.

I'm not sure if I'll ever be the same. I hope not. I only know that I want to see Jesus more and I may have discovered one way to spend that time with Him. So, if you want the same thing as I do...being with Jesus...then find a nursing home, a child, a friend that cannot help themselves right now, or an organization that works with the "least of these" and serve them.

I don't know what today will hold at the tiny flat...but one thing is for sure, I will spend the day with some new friends from Poland...and of course, I'll be looking at Jesus.