The Day Jesus needed a Bed

By Joel McKerrow

When I look into the face of any one person I am looking directly into the face of Jesus. I am staring straight at the one I claim to worship and it is then that I show whether I truly am a worshipper of Jesus or just a church addict. It is our lives outside the church that show whether we are worshippers and disciples or whether we are tricking others and ourselves.

This became real to me one day as I was walking along the strip of shops at manly beach in Sydney. Looking through all the stores at what I could buy I was suddenly struck with the thought of how much money is being wasted in these shops when there could be someone out on the street who desperately needs it. I walked down the mall for a few metres and there right in front of me (one of those rare bird opportunities) was an extremely old man hobbling along desperately holding on to his walking frame as he stumbled along the mall. His beard was the stereotypical homeless persons untrimmed mess of hair, his skin wrinkled with years of strain, his bones obviously just about to collapse under him, his bald head hidden by the old black beanie he wore, his appearance was that of a poor dishevelled homeless man who desperately needed…something…anything that could help. In stark contrast was the consumerism all around that drowned out any concern for the old man as he carefully slid down onto a wooden seat to catch his breath from his long trek down thee mall.

As I approached this man I knew God was calling me to do something for him, yet I did not know what that was. I offered him breakfast as I walked up to him, but he mumbled to me that he had already eaten. I sat down next to him and for the next hour we talked about life and family and love and suffering. He was living in a little housing commission house a few suburbs North and he was, in his words, “Waiting till the good Lord takes him.” His life was one filled with suffering, as his wife and daughter (his only child) had been side swiped by a drunk driver killing them both. He opened up his life to me and the connection happened. He was not a drunkard, he didn’t try and swindle me out of money, he was an old dying man that, well, had a bad bed. That’s right he had a mattress at home that was worthless and so he would hardly sleep at night. So the Lord had bought me to this man to help him in anyway I could, so I rang up a mattress company and had one delivered the next day to his house.  It was that talk with the old man named John and being able to buy him a bed that I discovered what true worship really is, what Christianity is all about when you strip it down to its basics. I found out the truth that James shares in James 1:27,

“Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.”
   
I do not tell this story to boast about a good work, rather to say that I met Jesus that day. I truly met Jesus. In fact I bought Jesus a bed and chatted with him about life for an hour. I tell you this story because it took me 21 years to actually do this. I tell you this story to boast in my weaknesses, that I was some supposed ‘Jesus-follower’ yet it was this day that I truly met Jesus and saw a side of my saviour that I had ignored for so long. John, the old man, let the tears flow as I rang the mattress place and when I sat back down next to him I received a smile and a hug from Jesus that I will never forget. It was the hug of a skeleton figure, a hug from a dying body, a hug from a smelly, dirty old man, a smile from yellow, moulding broken teeth. A smile and a hug from my Jesus that I will never forget.