I saw Jesus on the street today

Today while I was heading off to Target to do a little Adopt a Family shopping, I saw a man crossing the street.  That, in and of itself is not unusual, but what was unusual was that he was blind, wearing a big stuffed backpack and was standing in the crosswalk in the median.  He made it half way across the street and was waiting for the next light, but he had gotten turned around, so that instead of starting to walk the rest of the way across the crosswalk in a box around the intersection, he set off across the middle of the intersection – like he was walking in a cross through the intersection.

Of course, my heart lurched, and someone must have yelled or honked because he backed up and tried to feel where he was.  He appeared to get settled in, but he was still pointing across the intersection. At that point I was thinking “Someone help the man!”  (I should point out that I was not within earshot or reach so I wasn’t being unhelpful intentionally).  At that point, a passenger in one of the cars on his side of the street jumped out, pointed him the right way, grabbed his hand and walked across the street holding hands with him.  He walked him over to the corner, and the two stood there talking still holding hands.  The man who helped him was probably 70, and small and gray-haired, and my heart lurched again, but this time in a good way.

Observing this little incident really reminded me of the fact that there are still kind people out there, when you give them a chance. When I was thinking about how I would describe the blind man, I was thinking of adjectives like tall, strong, bearded, with wild dark hair that radiated out from his face.  He was a mountain compared to his helper.  While he was blind, he didn’t look homeless or crazy or frail in any way, and then I realized the easiest way I could describe him was perhaps to say that he looked like Jesus if Jesus were rugged and a hiker.  Packing some miracles on his back. Then I thought of that Joan Osborn song – you know, What if God was one of us? 

What if? What if he comes around every now and then to check on us? To take the temperature of the human race? There he was, just walking around, seeing if anyone would care enough to take a second out of their mad dash to shop, or celebrate HIS season, or get to work  to save him back.  Looks like today, he found the help what he was looking for.  It does make you wonder, will he find it tomorrow?

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