Are You Jesus?

I can't take credit for the following.  It was sent to me via eMail a long time ago.  It's really powerful and makes you think - could you be mistaken for Jesus?  I wish that we all could!

 

A few years ago a group of salesmen went to a regional sales convention in Chicago.  They had assured their wives that they would be home in plenty of time for Friday night's dinner.  In their rush through the airport, with tickets and briefcases in hand, one of these salesmen inadvertently kicked over a table which held a display of apples.  Apples flew everywhere.  Without stopping or looking back, they all managed to reach the plane in time for their nearly missed boarding.  All but one.

 

He paused, took a deep breath, got in touch with his feelings, and experienced a twinge of compassion for the girl whose apple stand had been overturned.  He told his buddies to go on without him, waved good-bye, told one of them to call his wife when they arrived at their home destination and explain his taking a later flight.  Then he returned to the terminal where the apples were all over the terminal floor.  He was glad he did.

 

The 16-year-old girl was totally blind!  She was softly crying, tears running down her cheeks in frustration, and at the same time helplessly groping for her spilled produce as the crowd swirled about her, no one stopping and no one to care for her plight.

 

The salesman knelt on the floor with her, gathered up the apples, put them back on the table and helped organize her display.  As he did this, he noticed that many of them had becomwe battered and bruised, these he set aside in another basket.

 

When he had finished, he pulled out his wallet and said to the girl, "Here, please take this $40 for the damage we did.  Are you okay?"  She nodded through her tears.  He continued on, "I hope we didn't spoil your day too badly."  As the salesman started to walk away, the bewildered blind girl called out to him, "Mister...."  He paused and turned to look back into those blind eyes.  She continued, "Are you Jesus?"

 

He stopped in mid-stride, and he wondered.  Then slowly he made his way to catch the later flight with that question burning and bouncing about in his sould:  "Are you Jesus?"

 

Do people mistake you for Jesus?  That's our destiny, is it not?  To be so much like Jesus that people cannot tell the difference as we live and interact with a world that is blind to His love, life and grace.

 

If we claim to know Him, we should live, walk and act as He would.  Knowing Him is more than simply quoting Scripture and going to church.  It's actually living the Word as life unfolds day to day.

 

You are the apple of His eye even though we, too, have been bruised by a fall.  He stopped what He was doing and picked you and me up on a hill called Calvary and paid in full for our damaged fruit.

 

Let us live like we are worth the price He paid.

This makes me think, too, how many times we are so task-focused that we miss the opportunity to be kind because we don't even see the people we pass in our rush to finish our task!  We are in a hurry to get where we need to go, to cross off the next thing on our to-do list.  In our hurry to get to the next thing, we miss life!

What if Jesus had been too busy to heal the Centurion's servant? 
What if He had been in too much of a hurry to realize that virtue had left His garment? 
What if He had been in such a hurry that He didn't have time to minister to Martha and Mary? 
Can you think of one place in the Bible where it says that Jesus hurried?

In order to practice the kindness that Jesus would have us practice, we need to be able to see the opportunity first. 

Let us walk slower with eyes wide open!