When my daughter Jennifer, grandson Charlie, and I traveled to Ethiopia in July I traveled with a sense that the Lord wanted to show me something special. Indeed the excitement of bringing Nati and Feven home after so many months was very special, but there was something else I couldn’t put my finger on.
On our third night in Africa I found myself awake in the middle of the night. The dogs really do sleep all day and bark all night! As I lay there on my bed I asked, “Lord, what is it you brought me here to see?” “I wanted you to see the face of the least of these,” was the reply in my spirit. By this time we had seen many faces of “the least of these” and had been profoundly affected by them. I accepted this explanation and went back to sleep satisfied with His answer.
The next morning while riding in a window van we were stopped in traffic in a particularly congested area of Addis Ababa. I saw a man walking between the cars of the traffic jam, heading straight toward our van. Like the others in the van I was taken aback by his appearance. His face was a mass of scar tissue, barely recognizable as a face at all. He walked directly up to our van, but didn’t say a word. He did not ask us for anything nor did he extend a hand in any type of gesture of solicitation. He merely fixed us with his gaze and slowly side stepped his way along the windows of the van then turned and walked away through the stopped vehicles.
You could have heard a pin drop in that van. I said, “That was Jesus who just walked by our van.” I then related what the Spirit had revealed to me in the night. It was clear that the Lord had in mind a particular face to represent, for me, the, “least of these.” Everyone in the van was profoundly affected by this encounter and no one who saw him will ever forget that face.
I had been home from Ethiopia for about one week when the Lord spoke to me again about this experience. I was walking and praying near my home when the Spirit said, “The man you saw in Ethiopia was not just figuratively Jesus, but it was Jesus Himself!” I said, “Wait a minute, I do not want to make of this something that it was not.” I was already completely blessed by this encounter that was to help me put a face on “the least of these” in a way I had never been able to before. The Spirit, however, was quite convincing about this being a manifestation of Jesus Himself. As I embraced the wonder of what He was saying to me I said, “Lord, if I had known that it really was you, I would have pursued you through the traffic and embraced you!” He said, “That is the point of it all, I want you to embrace “the least of these my brothers” with the same enthusiasm you would have shown had you known it was me!”
I hear you Lord. Give me the grace to embrace “the least of these” as I would you.
