Part 1.
Today I walked past a haggard looking homeless woman ugly crying on a picnic table on my way back to my car coming from the downtown library.
Her shirt was torn away above the belly button and hung loose on her unkept frame. Her pants were torn and dirty.
Through the tear in her pants, I saw a bloody scraped knee. She curled into herself in a way that spoke of deep exhaustion.
Her smell reached me even from several feet away. It was the unmistakable smell of old sweat mixed with alcohol.
I thought of Jesus who could have laid hands on this woman and made it feel better and healed all the wounds that she’s suffering from.
For a moment I considered approaching her to offer a hug, or a hand on her shoulder with a prayer. This pull toward compassion caught me off guard.
But she was so ugly and so nasty looking and so distressed that I turned the other way and kept walking.
These words sound harsh as I write them, but that’s what happened. My body recoiled at the thought of getting closer. I focused my eyes elsewhere.
Then I thought of Peter, who denied knowing Jesus three times when the moment came to stand with Him.
Despite all his passionate declarations of loyalty, when fear took hold, Peter claimed he’d never even met the man he’d followed for years.
I felt what I imagined to be a similar recognition wash over me. I had just denied this woman’s humanity the same way Peter had denied Christ.
An unsettled feeling stuck in my chest. It stayed with me as I walked to my car. It was that familiar hot feeling when you know you’ve failed some essential test of who you want to be.
How many people like me have looked the other way? How many times has she been invisible to those who could have offered even the smallest gesture of recognition?
As I was driving home, the encounter gripped me. The image of her crying, puffy, and dirty faced, along with what feels like my own failure.
Maybe that’s what Peter felt after his third denial.
As I pen these thoughts, I can only describe it as a weight that won’t lift, and refuses to let me forget.
Which makes me consider that maybe redemption begins with feelings of guilt or shame.
Read what happened the next day when I was given a second chance.