Who is Welcome?

A couple of nights ago I was heading home from work at 2:30 in the morning.  Of course there wasn’t another car on the road and I had to drive pretty slowly because it was very foggy.  My route from Lexington to Lawrenceburg takes me down a two lane country road which has quite a few cars during the day, but at night it is pretty desolate.  As I came around a curve in the road, out of the fog on the side of the road appeared a black man, maybe in his late 40’s, wearing dirty jeans and a t-shirt, waving his arms in an apparent attempt to get me to stop.  I had not seen any broken down cars in the area, so I assumed he was just trying to get a ride.  It was one of those instances where I felt as though God was telling me to stop.

Now before anyone thinks that this was either incredibly noble, or incredibly stupid to stop and pick up a complete stranger in the middle of the night on a deserted road, you have to remember that I was in a police uniform with a gun, Taser, pepper spray, etc.  While I pretty much forbid Holly from picking up strangers on the side of the road, I try to do it whenever I get the chance.  I know, double standard and all, but that’s just the way it is.

So as this man comes up and gets into my truck, I immediately smell the odor of sweat and alcohol coming from him.  He tells me that he is headed to Lawrenceburg as well and I went ahead and gave him a ride home.  As we were driving down the road I got to know a little about him.  He was walking to Lawrenceburg because his girlfriend kicked him out of the house because he was drinking.  He also shared with me the struggle he was having keeping up on the child support he has to pay to several different women.  In the short time I had to spend with him, I got a brief look into the struggles of a person who is so similar to the people I deal with every day in the course of my job.

After I dropped him off, I began to ask myself, “Would he be welcome in the front doors of the church.”  Not just my church, but any one of a number in town.  Would he immediately be headed off at the door with “Can I help you?” or would he get “Welcome to … church.”  Many times we sit in church and sing “Just as I am” but really mean “sober up, clean up, shave, buy some respectable clothes, then you can come to Jesus.  In Matthew Ch 9 Jesus is eating with the tax collectors, when he is confronted by the Pharisees who chastised him for being with the sinners.  His response to them is (paraphrase) it is not the healthy who need me, it is the sick.  Too many times it seems as though we spend 90% of our time and resources on programs and entertainment for the healthy instead of being totally invested in what Jesus’ heart is, the lost.