Sometimes I stay on the same side of the sidewalk but pass by like I've just developed advanced stages of cataracts and can't see the end of my own nose, much less the impecunious man sitting a whole entire 2 feet to my left.
There are times I drop a dollar in the outstretched cup, careful to divert my eyes to the now fascinating crack between my shoes. As if poverty is a condition to be caught through eye contact.
Sitting folding clothes, I pulled up Youtube and clicked on the first card board song I found.
I know, I know it's odd, but it's what I do.
I clicked on this video.
Our sweet little testimonies aren't so nice and tidy.
Those cardboard testimonies are attractive, clean, inviting, some very powerful.
I am a huge picture person.
I kind of envisioned salvation like me standing in my 1950's attire, knocking at the honorable Jesus door, presenting him with my perfect apple pie to complement the feast he's prepared.
Every guest is dressed in their best, on their best behavior.
The picture he is beginning to paint isn't so inviting.
It's messy and there's no clean piece of cardboard to carefully, meticulously write on.
Thankfully, He doesn't avoid poverty like I do.
He doesn't cross the street to avoid me.
He joyfully endured the cross to affectionately embrace me.
He doesn't avoid my gaze, and find other things fascinating.
I'm mean he created arch angles and has elders, and animals, and saints crying "Holy, holy, holy" day and night. He wouldn't be making up an interest, that's captivating.
But my King is enthralled with me; not because of a beauty I’ve worked up on my own.
Oh no, no, no.
At the foot of the cross he has dressed me in his own purity, his own righteousness, his own status.
He doesn't drop a pity dollar in my cup, but prepares a feast of well aged wine, well refined.
Nothing cheap for his beloved.
And at that feast when my cup is so full that thick grace liquid is spilling over the edge washing my hands with it's crimson shade, Jesus will be swallowing up death that demanded a debt I could not pay.
I, we were just like the inspiration for cardboard testimonies.
We were the beggar sitting in the shadow dirty, no revolting, invisible, broken, wrecked.
“For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, which though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich.
2 Corinthians 8:9"
These are their stones of rememberence
