meeting broken eyes

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i never know what to say to them,

to those men with the dirty clothes and outstretched fingers. to the guitar-toting girls on the median with their cardboard signs and hand-sewn jackets. 

their eyes might be pleading, but i wouldn't know.

because i never look. 

because for some reason, i am ashamed to meet their faces.

 it's not fear i feel.

they're the ones without homes or jobs or money. but i'm the one with a blush of embarrassment and low-ducked head.

i need to learn to look. 

because there are souls behind that filth. 

i remember a little girl me holding her daddy's hand, feeling so self-conscious in my green velvet cape, while my daddy handed red and yellow-arched "dollars" to these men and women with nothing to eat and no place to go. 

even then, i was shamed into silence.

into lowered eyes.

not just here in this country, but across oceans too. 

people with nothing, they frighten me. not because i'm afraid of them...

...but i'm afraid for them, and my heart burns with the shame of having so much.

i measure my shame with theirs and keep a down-turned face.  

these people have so much soul. 

{via pinterest}

sometimes Jesus is in cinnamon apples and warm home hospitality between sisters. 

and sometimes He finds us in the pews and kneeling benches of candlelit cathedrals. 

but sometimes 

He is in the small.

 in the filthy. 

the shamed. 

the dirty beards and faces lined with so much grief and battered old guitars. 

He is in those haunting eyes which i must learn to lift my head to meet with a smile that speaks Jesus to the emptiness. 

because i forget who He is. 

i forget that there is heart there. that every situation is different, and Jesus sits amid the unwashed hands and eyes that i ache to see. 

the eyes that speak volumes that are yet unwritten but should be. there are stories here.

i just need to raise my head 

and meet their eyes.