The Last, The Lost, The Least and the Little

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Chad Bird - a preacher I follow on Instagram, recently wrote about Matthew 25:31-46. And he quotes author Robert Capon as saying that Jesus appeared in the guise of those who were ‘the last, the lost, the least, and the little’. 


How blessed I am, for I have been last, I have been lost, I have been the least and I have been little - and in all this, I found that He was truly with me, within me and in those who were comforting me. Every day I learn more and more that suffering and pain is the doorway to experiencing God. 


So, God’s not in the joy? Of course He is, as God so clearly and beautifully tells us in John 10:10 ("I came so that they might have life and have it more abundantly.") But, in the joy, we tend to look outward. There are distractions that keep us from looking at God, there are celebrations that continuously ask us to move our gaze from Him; and above all, there is always the threat of the 'me' and the 'I'. 


But, in suffering, we look inward. We are able to experience and see God in His fullness and in His infinite compassion. We learn that when we fall prostrate before Him in all our weakness and wretchedness; when we go to Him with our souls bursting with sinfulness and fake-righteousness and false modesty; when we are exhausted with the acts we put up and finally go to him in raw humaneness, that's when our egos and our selves are finally put to rest for us to see God. 


How grateful I am for those daggers to my heart, those endless nights where the tears never seemed to stop - for in that darkness is where I found my Light. 





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