Jesus at the traffic light

by Shannon Schmidt

The other day I was reading my Bible and I came across a story in Acts 3:1-10, where Peter and his buddy John are walking to church to go pray, and as they approach the temple gate there is a crippled dude there begging for money.

Now just as the get to the temple gate the crippled guy asks for some money and it says in vs 4 “Peter and John look him straight in the eye ”.

Now how often does something like this happen to us, we are driving to wherever and we pull up to a traffic light and there is a homeless dude there and he comes up to your window and all of a sudden we start to look for that non existent five bucks w dropped 2 years ago, or we act as if we got a super important call from the doctor telling us that its not cancer its just a mole.

We tend to ignore the struggle and the people who don’t seem to fit in with our culture of so-called beauty and in doing so dehumanize the person.

And I’m as guilty as the next guy is when it comes to acting this way.

But not Peter and John. They look the guy in the eye as if to acknowledge the guy as a human being and even to communicate without words that they care.

And then Peter says some profound words in vs 6 “Silver or Gold I do not have but what I do have I give to you freely”.

And then heals the guy.

Now for me healing is not the main issue here, but the fact that we need to have the same attitude as Peter, we need to acknowledge the people that live in the margins of our society and let them know that we care.

After all, where was Jesus found most of the time? For me, I see Jesus living and interacting with beggars, prostitutes and tax collectors the lowest of the low in His society.

And by choice and association Jesus himself was one of the marginalized, and I wondered why this was.

I think in struggle and amongst the margins is where Jesus found real life and truth, He found where He was needed and where He wanted to be.

Psalm 9:18

“But the needy will not always be forgotten, nor the hope of the afflicted ever perish”

So as a final thought for all of us remember the words of Jesus Himself in

Matthew 25:45

‘I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.”

So next time you see Jesus at the traffic lights maybe take some time to show him u care.