He couldn’t have been much more than six years old, and very small for his age. Drawing his knees up under his chin and pulling a misshapen black tee shirt down over his knees he curled up into a fetal ball against the side of a building. The street around him bustled with traffic and people on their way to work. Except for his tousled hair and two dirty shoeless feet he resembled nothing more than a bundle of rags that someone may have dropped on the city sidewalk.
I didn’t notice him until I looked up from the breakfast table. He was just on the other side of the restaurant window looking up at me through the blur of moving feet as people stepped around his tiny body. Our eyes locked solemnly for a fleeting moment as he clutched his shirt and rolled over; his clear unsmiling eyes had seemed neither pleading nor expecting. My second cup of coffee seemed bitterer than the first as I watched him and the steady stream of people walking by. It was as if they saw but took no notice whether he was lost and hoping to be found or just another street kid without a home.
My heart went out to him but I didn’t know what to do. He seemed so vulnerable and small on the other side of the plate glass window. That window stood between us, a transparent barrier preventing me from speaking or reaching out to him. I wondered if I should leave the table and go to him with words, or coins, or even to invite him in for breakfast. He looked so thin and hungry. But time was short and I had other business to attend to. This was not my city, I was traveling in Asia, what could I possibly do that would make the kind of difference that he really needed. Besides, wouldn’t it look just a little strange and possibly perverted for a big white guy from far away to take a personal interest in a vulnerable little street kid? Bad things happen to unprotected kids in many cities and it would be better for a local group or person to look after him. The little boy was on their street, not mine – it wasn’t my business or anything that I could be responsible for.
One by one the invisible barriers of rationality, apprehension, and even fear came between my heart and hands, blocking me from reaching out to touch that little boy. Like the plate glass window, those barriers allowed me to see his huddled form on the sidewalk without being able to reach out to him, without moving beyond my feelings of pity into actions of compassion. Often more formidable than physical barriers or constraints of time and distance are the barriers of rationalization, justification, fear, judgment, pride and even anger that restrain our hearts – we see without reacting, and feel without responding.
My experience was the ageless story of those who encounter a helpless wounded victim along the way, but instead of stooping down to care they keep on moving, minding their own business. Like me, I am sure that every person who passed by that little boy had personal reasons for moving on. Was he just a drugged up little boy, a ragamuffin of the streets, a runaway kid, or was he a lost child whom the Father seeks?
Sometimes I wonder what it will take for the Father’s love in our hearts to so move in us that we break through those barriers to care, even when it is not our business. For weeks now, I haven’t been able to get the image of that street child out of my mind. I still argue with myself about whether or not I should have made it my business to care. The words of Jesus come to mind – “I was naked and you clothed me, hungry and you fed me, thirsty and you gave me something to drink…”
There is a sense in which I wonder if, by minding my own business and by passing by that ragged little boy, I passed by Jesus. Mother Theresa of Calcutta often noted that Jesus comes to us in the distressing disguises of the poor and the suffering, the outcast and the dying. She made it her business to care as if she was caring for Jesus, and I suppose if you and I and every other believer in Jesus were to do the same our communities, nations, and the world would be a very different place.
Today when the world is suffering so much,
I feel that the Passion of Christ is being relived in our people.
Let us serve Jesus in the distressing disguise of the poor.
Let us make sacrifices.
Let us allow God to love through us.
-Mother Theresa of Calcutta
Ron W. Nikkel is the president and CEO of Prison Fellowship International (PFI). For more information, visit the PFI website.