Today we set off to Colonial Williamsburg…

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Isaiah 56:1-8 (click here for scripture)

Have you ever seen a one-legged dog making its way down the street?
If you have seen a one legged dog then you’ve seen me …
Have you ever seen a one armed man punching at nothing but the breeze?
If you have seen a one armed man then you’ve seen me…
 ~ “The Wrestler” [Springsteen]

The man sat in my office. He was disheveled and his clothes were rags. But it was his teeth that were hard to believe. I could not stop staring at them. Multiple were missing and those that remained were dark with decay. AS he spoke he wiggled one with his tongue, as though he was a elementary child with a loose tooth. He was homeless and had come to my office to ask for painkiller…

   Looking at him I was convicted. Had he come to a Sunday morning worship, I would hot have excluded, but I would have judged him. I would have talked about him with others… Only in a dream would I love him unconditionally.

 We confess that ALL have sinned and fallen short, but when push comes to shove we exclude people. We may not ask anyone to leave, but we judge. We wonder why they have come. We talk behind their backs… all while singing “Jesus loves the little children”. Yet in that song there is a vision of something greater—of the gospel. I can imagine not excluding anyone, though it seems impossible—like trying to punch the breeze. But God can do “immeasurably more than we can imagine”! (Eph 3:20)

Eunuch and Foreigner ~ Both of these groups were excluded from temple worship. Literally left on the outside, to look in while others worship God!

  In Acts 8, Philip comes upon the Ethiopian Eunuch reading Isaiah 53. In that moment the Spirit comes down and the excluded person is saved! And I imagine the Eunuch did not stop reading, but kept on and I would have loved to see his reaction when he came to our passage…

IMAGINE:  The Eunuch reading Isaiah 56. How would he react?

 Why do we exclude people? Have you excluded anyone? Have you ever been excluded?