I THOUGHT I WAS A BUM

“Jesus must like this store,” Harvey said. Looking around he could see people enjoying their shopping experience. The printed material at the store said: “Our Mission Statement: To demonstrate the love of Jesus by providing free clothing, Bibles, books, toys, and small household items to people in need. To provide these in an uplifting, clean, Christian store-like setting.”

The place is called The Free Store. Harvey’s eyes-of-Jesus observation is almost definitely right.

Harvey just wandered in to shop one day; now today he’s helping by hanging up used clothes. The lady who runs the store asked him about his statement. “You help bums,” Harvey replied.

The Free Store lady quickly assured him, “I don’t call the people bums.” Yet, she had misunderstood Harvey’s point. He’s only ten years old: “I thought I was a bum.”

So how did Harvey come to the conclusion that he was a bum? He wasn’t born thinking he was a bum. Did you tell him?

With Harvey’s many quirks, its pretty ease to imagine him at least as a miniature bum. Almost what the Bible categorizes as lowly. Lowly: Humble, meek; of or related to a low social or economical rank. The Bible says: “Though the LORD God is high, yet He gives respect, regard and attention to the lowly.”

It is too easy for me to mentally rank people on the “lowly scale” when I see them. Have I every non-verbally conveyed to anyone, child or adult, the message that they are bums?  Have you? When we do this, we are in danger of entering into another category—“the proud.”

The Bible verse above continues; “but the proud, God knows afar off.”  God help me; I don’t want to be far from you. God, I want to be close to you—like Harvey.