Porch de Chile: Jesus and Matthew

So I have developed an enormous amount of respect for Jesus while on this trip. Allow me to elaborate.

I have spent a lot a time hanging out in the bar at the hostel talking with people and getting to know many people that Christians might refer to as pagans, people whose actions and lifestyles make many Christians look down their noses at them and try to avoid them. But these are the very people that Jesus spent his time with during his time here on earth. Lets take a look at the calling of Matthew the disciple.

"As Jesus went on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector´s booth. "Follow Me," he told him, and Matthew got up and followed him. While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew´s house, many tax collectors and sinners came and ate with him and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, "Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?" On hearing this, Jesus said, "It is not the healthy who need adoctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: I desire mercy not sacrafice. For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners." -- Matthew 9:9-12

You see, Jesus didn´t spent his time with the people that thought they already had things figured out. He spent time with the people who were in desperate need of a relationship with the only one that can make us whole again. I have so much respect for Jesus because no matter where he was, his presence changed things. (I suppose his being the son of God helps with that, but you know what I mean). He wasn´t affected by what people thought, and he didn´t judge anyone by what they did or looked like, because he sees us all for what we really are: Desperate people, drowning as we cling to scraps of wood such as money, popularity, beauty, prestige. Not caring who we step on or kill in an attempt to feel some sort of worth and to save ourselves from what feels like certain death. On my own I am no different from the prostitute on the street, or the crooked business man with his millions. The thing that makes me different, (or at least I hope different) is that I have Jesus with me, and as we have all know, being in the presence of Jesus changes everything. As Christians we are called to be different, but I think we need to rethink what this means. I think so often when we think about this whole, what makes us different thing, we jump straight to a, "no drinking, no drugs, no sex before marriage, no abortion, lets just box ourselves in and ride this out" mentality which is, I believe, not what Jesus means at all when he tells us to be different. What I think he means is that we stop playing the worlds game. We stop judging others and trying to get praise from man for "our" accomplishments and "our" good behavior. We stop looking for the speck in the other persons eye, and we just start loving. We love becuase Chirst first loved us, and we reflect everything back to Jesus. After all, he is the one that this is all about in the first place. So, I challenge you. Spend time with someone that makes you feel uncomfortable and don´t think about how you are so far ahead of them morally, and do what Jesus did. Love them.

I know that I don´t always do the best job being an ambassador for Jesus, but I know that with him all things are possible. It has been truly a blessing to meet the people that I met I will never forget them because they have made me realize why we need so much of Jesus, it is so that no matter where we are or who we are with, people may drink of the life we have inside of us. This post is dedicated to them.