Crying on the street...Jesus' true character

This is an experience one of our Unearthed sisters had about a month ago. It's an amazingly heart wrenching and heartwarming story of love. A story that shows the true heart of Jesus!! We hope you are blessed, encouraged and stirred.

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Since joining Unearthed, I've always sincerely believed that our prayers are changing things: places, men, women, spiritual climates, etc. However, I confess that I've overlooked the fact that our prayers are changing our own lives too.

For months, I've had the "inconvenience" of 2 options for my commute from our church's morning prayer to work: walk past the love motel, or walk past the drinking places. The love motel route is longer, but it's much more calm... you only see a few men in business attire fidgeting with their shirt buttons as they stumble outside, adverting their eyes from each person they pass. The second route takes me past several restaurants where people carry on chatting loudly, groping prostitutes, and taking shots at 7am each day of the week. It makes me uncomfortable, so I usually take the quiet way to work.

But recently I've been reading the gospels and God was reminding me to seek after the compassion of Jesus (Matthew 9:35-38)

³⁵ Then Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every sickness and every disease among the people.³⁶ But when He saw the multitudes, He was moved with compassion for them, because they were weary and scattered, like sheep having no shepherd. ³⁷ Then He said to His disciples, “The harvest truly is plentiful, but the laborers are few. ³⁸ Therefore pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest.”

I often pray for the laborers to be sent out, but I had a much clearer vision of how to pray for this recently when our pastor exhorted the congregation to have our "spiritual antennas" up. We reside in a mission field that is filled with people who are in need of healing. He pointed out: are you like the priest or the Levite? Walking on as you see somebody beaten and in need of healing?

With these things on my mind, I walked through the route that took me past the drinking places. I prayed, but when I got onto the main street (where all of the "dignified" commuters walk) I passed a woman who was screaming at the top of her lungs into her phone, cursing at somebody. She was clearly a prostitute, and her skin was so exposed that I could see this intense rash (it looked like psoriasis) covering her body. Her presence made me VERY uncomfortable, but I felt this conviction to speak love over her. So, I started praying that somebody would stop and do that (surely, there had to be at least 1 other Christian on such a crowded street). Like me, everybody was uncomfortable with her making such a scene.

I passed her, feeling this conviction in my stomach that was so intense that I felt sick. By the time I headed into the subway, I felt like I was going to pass out from the tightness in my stomach... so I went back up the stairs for a bit of air. I felt lighter as I went forward, and I soon realized that the closer I walked towards this woman... the better my stomach felt. I found her sitting on a stoop, weeping with shrieks that I didn't understand. I was so stressed/annoyed at this point, because I had no idea what to do... so finally I decided to sit beside her and put my arm around her. She flinched and shook me off, cursing at me and scooting away so that she could keep wailing. I sat there awkwardly for awhile and then I handed her a tissue, and my water bottle. Surprisingly, she took them and apologized to me curtly. I just nodded, and she stared at me... so I just kept nodding, trying not to cry too. Then she violently threw herself onto my lap, and just started crying all over my skirt. I was so uncomfortable because I kept thinking about how late I was going to be, and I kept watching people watching us.

Finally (I was just so embarrassed and frustrated by the situation) I started crying too. Then, I just started patting her head and praying for the both of us. I don't know if I'm jumping to conclusions, but I felt like she was nodding in agreement. Regardless, we cried there for awhile... until this guy (probably a pimp) came up... grabbed her off of me and threw her into a car. She was reaching for me, and screaming... but I just froze and felt so helpless. I just sat there after she went away, and cried and prayed. I was late to work, but by the grace of God... morning classes were canceled for an assembly.

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