A Glimpse of Jesus

© Deborah Turner

The funny thing is that this happens to me all the time and Jesus never looks anything at all like I expect. Once I saw him in the arms of a teacher comforting a crying student on his first day of school. I thought, “Oh, come on, it’s just her job isn’t it”? But it really was so much more than that. There was another time that He actually spoke to me at Church. It was the strangest thing; the sermon topic that morning was the answer to something that I had been praying about. Out of all of the people in church that day He was speaking directly to me. Every word brought goose bumps. There are a lot of little moments during my day that I don’t even realize I saw Him until later on. Like once in terrible weather conditions, He was on the roadside helping a stranded motorist … who else would have stopped in 110 degrees? He came to our front door once when my husband was out on workman’s compensation. We had just given our last $5.00 in the church offering plate, later that Sunday afternoon a co-worker of my husband’s showed up with a collection of over $300.00 to financially help us out during this difficult time.

Why when I really think about it, I have seen Jesus all of my life. I saw Him in my own home when I was a child as my family took in a stranded woman during a historic blizzard. She slept under our roof, ate dinner with us, played board games by candlelight, and left us as soon as the snow plows cleared the roads. I don’t even know her name. I saw Jesus once at my kid’s school while I was waiting for the release bell; my older daughter in third grade took my youngest daughter in kindergarten by the hand as they crossed the street. He was at the Hospital when my father was very ill, I was comforted as He held my father’s hand and explained a medical procedure. He was there again later at the Hospice Center comforting all of us toward the very end.

Oh, I see him here and I see him there, and He never looks the same way twice. Of all places today I saw him at Walmart. He was in the canned vegetable isle helping a very old woman reach for something on the shelf. He was so patient and kind. He seemed to tower over her because she was bent over, and small and frail. I watched silently from a distance as He carefully handed her a can of red kidney beans, reading the label to her because her own eyes were failing.

“How much is it?” she barked gruffly.

“Eighty-six cents” he said very loudly, in front of her eyes syllable by syllable.

“How much is that one?” she said, pointing with her crooked finger to the one with the white generic label.

“Sixty-six cents” he said loudly again, being certain to look into her face as if she could read his lips. Then He carefully handed her the can.

“What?”

“Sixty-six cents” He said again, as he gently pointed to the label.

“What?” she said.

“Sixty-six …”

“Oh forget it!” she grunted.

“I don’t need green beans anyway!”

I even saw a glimpse of Jesus tonight when my husband came home from work with dinner and a bottle of wine. Well they drank wine in the Bible didn’t they? How else could he have known that I didn’t have time to make dinner? So I sit here wondering where Jesus is going to pop up next. I really don’t think that it matters as long as He just keeps popping up. It is when Jesus stops popping up I will begin to worry. So the next time that someone stops the elevator for you, or picks up something that you just dropped, or perhaps just smiles at you when you really need a smile … think of Jesus. This world is really full of reminders of what Jesus would have done. We just need to be aware of it, pay it forward and improve the good in life. You are a child of God, you may not be everything that you think you should be … but you are everything God called you to be, a masterpiece.