Minister’s Corner: How do you see the people around you?

Jesus said, in Matthew 9:12, “They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick.” It is obvious this is how Jesus wants us to view the unsaved, the cases that walked by our church doors.
Imagine walking into a medical clinic with a nasty infected cut on your arm. The doctor takes one look and says, “Get that gross thing away from me! How long has it been festering like that, anyway?” Then he walks off to his nice, clean office muttering, “What’s going on with people nowadays? It seems like everyone that comes in here is sick or wounded.”
Unfortunately, that is how some of us react when we see the wounded people all around us. Let’s face it, society today is different that it was when a lot of us were growing up. It used to be that most people shared a kind of “Judeo-Christian” heritage. Whether Christian or not, most people have basic agreement about moral standards. That is no longer true. It’s not that most people in our society have rejected Christian values, many of them don’t even understand what Christian values are.
So let me give all of us a little reminder. Sinners tend to sin, and sin always gets ugly, and it messes people up. So stop and think a minute: How do you view the people around you who don’t share your values, tastes and opinions? Do you feel irritated? Do you go a step further and get angry? Or do you go even further than that and condemn them?
Jesus did not see the people around Him as evil and disgusting. Instead, He saw them as weak, sick and in need of care. And Jesus described the cure when He told the Pharisees, “But go ye and learn what that meaneth, I will have mercy and not sacrifice.”
Like Jesus, we are to see people through eyes of mercy and compassion and strive to lead them into the light of the knowledge of Jesus Christ.