Love the unlovely.
Today a homeless man got on my tube carriage, he was old, dirty and smelly obviously sleeping rough and using to tube to keep warm. He seemed to be angry cussing and swearing at people some aggressively if they reacted to his being there. “Don’t you dare move or I’ll ****ing kill you†and other such delights. People got up and moved, covered their noses and his anger grew. He eventually sat next to me and I just carried on reading my book after a while the majority had moved as far away as possible and it was me and him but people were watching intently. You could see by their expressions that they could not understand why I carried on sitting there. After about a minute he said to me “you couldn’t lend me a fag could you†I said I didn’t smoke but if I did I would give him one. He smiled and I smiled and he said I know you would! This angry man wasn’t angry with me because I had accepted him as he was. He talked and we laughed and it was a great moment of connection. I looked back down the carriage and people were still watching with their noses covered, personally I had forgotten the smell. When it came to my stop I wished him well and he wished me a merry Christmas his anger gone because I believe he felt accepted.
I tell this story not because I am a saint (far from it), not because I always get it right (because I don’t), but because how this simple act changed an aggressive angry man into a pleasant human being with no anger.
The challenge is what would you do in this situation? Where would you place yourself in the carriage?
Christ always loved the unlovable, touched the untouchables and mixed with the outcasts? That is what we should try to do also.
Related articles: Angels in disguise. A poem.
                      Look a little deeper. A picture.
                     First opinion. A discussion starter.
 Matt Calvert’s blog reflects on this theme in this blog entry.
