Hard Moments

There are people around us we do not see.  There are people around us we do not want to see.  There are people around who we see and wish we had not seen them.  There are people around us who when seen stay on our minds, but even more on our hearts.  Most of us live most of our days without seeing the people who live beyond the reach of our radar.  We often pray for them as we do when we collect all their names together in our prayers for the sick, or the hungry, or the homeless.  We pray for them quickly and never really see them until we do.  

When we do, it can jolt our sense of well being.  I wonder what Jesus would do if He walked into a chemo treatment room filled with people whose hope was about gone.  I wonder what Jesus would do with someone whose mind was in a place other than the place where they lived.  I wonder what Jesus would do if walking on a road filled with people who were completely overcome by some of the worst stuff of life.  I wonder because whatever He would do is what we are called to do in those unbearable situations.  Into some situations Jesus brought healing, but not in all.  He cured some, but not everyone.  

As we struggle to live and care in a world filled with people we would rather not see, perhaps, it is a moment for us to pray healing prayers.  Certainly, those moments of awareness call us to pay attention to the person whose struggle is not one which can be laid down as easily as most of ours.  The letter to the Hebrews call us to remember those in prison as if we were in prison with them and to remember those being tortured as if we were being tortured with them. (Hebrews 13:3).  May we remember, too, those who live in impossible situations as if our situation was impossible as well.