Julie Ware – The Least of These

Years ago I had to make one of my more devastating life’s decisions. I had known for a long time that I had to go to the crossroads and choose a different road and life change. Again, it was not a decision I wanted to make nor did I want to venture into the unknown . . . I was in uncontrollable tears as I boarded a bus in Cleveland, Ohio. Everyone looked curiously at me as I continued to sob uncontrollably. But it was my world that was falling apart . . . AND the moments to confront and grieve over a tremendous life change.

When I got off at the bus stop in a daze of where to makes steps from here. . . . A diminutive little man with a cane who could hardly walk . . . and could hardly get to where he was going. It was painful to watch . . . but yet, he came up to me and said, “Can I do anything at all for you.” Someone cared, someone who had little energy to give but he would give what he had. There was nothing he could do . . . but yet he did everything . . . I knew that there was one person on the bus who cared. It strengthens me even today to know that most people who have the least, give the most. There will be the place for that memory in my heart as long as I live.

Like the little man with the cane most ministers who are assigned to a church come to a church broken in some ways. They have a calling but are human and in some ways crying inside to achieve the things that God has for them to do . . . for the many decisions that they have had to make, they are still too human and common to “heal, fix or save” . . . These things “healing, fixing and saving” is totally in God’s realm of capabilities . . . and not those of the minister.

The most the minister can do is have a heart for the Lord and seek Him and through Jesus Christ as the shepherd prays for his sheep to be “healed, fixed and saved”. Sometimes the minister feels like the little man with the cane . . . He doesn’t have the ultimate energy, power, nor total knowledge to give but shows up and is available through God’s strength and power to help where he can . . . realizing that he is humanly flawed but is willing “and” called by God to show up and be available to those who have less and those who have more.

In the “Should World” everyone on that bus “should” have showed more compassion and interests for one who was so distraught and in such distress but it was the one who had the least who was interested and care enough to ask “What can I do.”

Do you have time or care enough to encourage, empower and give time for your minister to help him grow through his brokenness? . . . to hold God’s child’s hand while they are becoming and growing through their brokenness?

Matthew 5:1-48

Seeing the crowds, he went up on the mountain, and when he sat down, his disciples came to him. And he opened his mouth and taught them, saying: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth….