The Living Example

Have you ever gotten so low that the only direction you can look is up, and you ask God, “What on earth was I born for anyway?” That’s what this story is about; a woman named Em, who wanted an answer from God and she got one.

It was nearing Chanukah, the Festival of light; (It’s referred to as the Feast of Dedication in the Gospel of John) a joyous time of the year, but for Em it wasn’t very joyous at all. Everything in her life was going wrong, and she was tired of being miserable all the time. Em questioned why God brought her in to this world; she felt that she was of no importance to anyone. She wanted to know what purpose her life serves, if any at all.

It was the third day of Chanukah and Em went to work early to clean the shop before it opened to the public. While she was cleaning, a man came through the front door and startled Em. It didn’t take long for her to realize that the man was much more afraid than she was. She could see that he was mentally challenged and as it turned out, he had gotten off of the bus at the wrong stop and he was lost. Em knew that this scared, disoriented, forty year old man was looking to her for help.

Em had her hands full just trying to keep the man calm, she couldn’t leave his sight for even a moment or he would go in to a panic. Another worker arrived and Em had them get the man some water and a snack. She finally got a hold of someone that knew the man, and seven hours later they came and picked him up. It was quite an experience for everyone involved; this was truly a Chanukah that Em would never forget.

That night, Em was reflecting on what had happened earlier in the day. She had no idea that God would put her in the position of having to mother a grown man as if he was a child, but He did. Em had been feeling so insignificant in her life, and now she had been given an opportunity to help someone who desperately needed her. Em felt that the man had helped her as much, if not more, than she helped him.

Em remembered a teaching that she had learned from the Gospels; “For I was hungry and you gave Me food; I was thirsty and you gave Me drink; I was a Stranger and you took Me in;” Em realized that she had been given a Matthew 25:35 opportunity. She knew that what she did was important, and that it was good. God had given her a living example of His Word, to show her how very significant that her life is.

Matthew twenty five goes on to read at verse forty; “Assuredly I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me.” The man, that Em helped that third day of Chanukah, was named Domingo; it is a variant of the name Dominick, which means, Lord.

Domingo was a beautiful gift that God gave Em, to reflect the true Light of Chanukah that lives in all of us; a heartfelt purpose of love and compassion.

If you wrote this story as a parable, I think it would read something like this;

There once was a woman who was very unhappy with her life. She questioned why God would bring her in to a cruel world to live a life of misery. She was seemingly insignificant to everyone around her, and she wanted to know what purpose her life served, if any at all.

One day the woman encountered a man who was lost and very afraid, and he needed her to help him find his way home. The woman had never been put in the position of having to help a stranger in this way, but she knew that this man was desperate, and needed her.

The woman did everything in her power to help the man. In doing so, she was heartbroken to find out how insignificant this man was in our public system. All in all, it was seven hours that would forever change the woman’s life, because the reality of the situation was that the woman needed the stranger as much as he needed her. She knew that God sent this man as a living example of His Word, to help her understand the significance of her life.

The woman’s world was anything but loving and compassionate, but she rose to occasion and gave love and compassion to a stranger in need. The woman wanted to know what purpose her life served and God gave her an answer.

The moral of the story is not that there’s always someone worse off than us. The moral is, that the love God has instilled in us; (Compassionate love) is not dependant on how loving and compassionate our world around us is.