Stranger at the Door

Knock, Knock, Knock. Loudly--even insistently--it sounded again!

Knock! Knock! Knock! “Does someone expect me to stop my Daily Devotions just to open the door?” I wondered as I continued with my meditation.

Again, the rapping came … knock, knock, knock!

Feeling more than a little put upon, I stood up and started for the door. Seeing a stranger standing there, coatless and dripping in the rain, I invited him in.

“Come in” I invited half-heartedly. He looked kinda shabby; fact is. He looked a little unkept--but he moved with an air of importance.  I stepped back and motioned for him to enter, although I felt a little uneasy about being alone with a stranger.

“Come out and see our neighborhood with me,” he responded. Looking me straight in the eye, he insisted, “come out and walk our streets. Share with me the pain and toil.”

“Ah, sir,” I remonstrated; “do not take me to your shame. Leave the wrong behind you. Come in and forget.”

Glancing away from my comfortable home and looking back down the slushy, pot-holed street, he gestured with a droop of the shoulder: “I can’t forget my friends, he said. My children, they are all out here. We need to wash, but we do not know how. Come and wash our feet.

“But, you don’t understand,” I whispered. “Look at my schedule! My calendar is full. See the neat lines boxing in the events stacked event on event. My life is evenly divided into an endless series of events that keep me busy here.”

Spinning around, he looked long and hard as if examining the street. Then, he pointed to a house down on the corner. “Who lives there?” he demanded.

“Why, Mr. & Mrs. Little Worth, I informed him. “They’re no good. They never come to church.”

“Do you know the hell they live in?” He queried. “Do you know about his constant drinking? Of her unfaithfulness, trying to get his attention? Do you know of their young son’s stealing to get their attention? Of their teenage son in jail?”

“Yes, I know,” I sighed wearily. “Everybody knows. Most any of us would help them out … if … only they would just straighten up.”

“But,” pleaded the tasteless looking man, “they need you to go to them and love them and share their problems.”

“Me?” I exploded! “Why me?”

Where are the Welfare case-workers?

Is there no one available from the Substance Abuse Council?

Where are the Law Enforcement people?”

The man turned, stared at me … and … slowly started down the steps. I closed the door as quickly as possible and leaned against it--quietly. But then, from somewhere, I heard it. I could not be sure where the sound issued forth from, but there came those words, I‘d read them many times: “When did we see you hungry, or thirsty, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister to you?”

Then, he answered them, saying, “Inasmuch as you did it not to one of the least of these, you did it not to me.”

Adapted for Warner’s World by walkingwithwarner.blogspot.com