Gus

I follow my friend Gus on Twitter. We were friends in college and now he's living in Virginia doing media stuff for Liberty and Thomas Road. Anyway, I was reading his Twitter the other day, and he was doing some work filming in Charlottesville, the town I grew up in. It was exciting to see him tweeting from placed I knew all about. First he said he was at the UVA baseball field, and I have been there. Then he said he was eating at Mellow Mushroom, and I was totally jealous because I have been there too (and it's good).

Then he said he was at an outdoor mall, and I knew that must be the Downtown Mall, which I’ve been to as well. And while there are a number of outdoor shopping areas in the Charlottesville area, I knew he meant this one because the rest of the tweet read “I am seeing alot of people with signs saying jobless and homeless.” As I was thinking about how excited I was at his posts because he was talking about things that I knew, I realized that I didn’t know them. I knew the University, and the restaurants, and the shopping, but I didn’t know the homeless, destitute, and suffering. I knew all the fun stuff, but I knew nothing about the pain.

So often we turn our heads from the truth and simply focus on ourselves. It’s just too easy to get wrapped up in our own lives and pay no attention to what’s going on right outside our window. Jesus said that what I have done for the “least of these” I did for Him. I feel like more often than not I turned my back on Him, wanting to ignore Him and know nothing about Him so I could continue to live my life. I’m beginning to see that a true relationship with Christ is lived out through affecting the “least of these” a lot more than it is sitting in a church service.