I read an email story this week about a group of salesmen who attended a convention out-of-town some years back. As they rushed through the terminal to get to their departing flight, one of them accidentally knocked over a table that held a display of apples.
They continued running for their plane as apples flew everywhere and rolled along the ground. They made it just in time to get on their plane. One of them felt a twinge of compassion for the girl whose apple stand they had knocked over, and told his buddies to go on without him and to tell his wife he would be taking a later flight.
Then he returned to the terminal where the apples were all over the terminal floor. He was glad he did. The 16-year-old girl was totally blind! She was crying, tears running down her cheeks in frustration, and at the same time helplessly groping for her spilled produce as the crowd swirled about her, no one stopping and no one caring for her plight.
The salesman knelt on the floor with her, gathered up the apples, put them back on the table and helped organize her display. As he did this, he noticed that many of the apples had become battered and bruised, so he put those aside in another basket. When he had finished, he pulled out his wallet and said to the girl, “Here, please take this $40 for the damage we did. Are you okay?”
The girl nodded through her tears. He continued on with, “I hope we didn’t spoil your day too badly.” As the salesman started to walk away, the bewildered blind girl called out to him, “Mister....”
He paused and turned to look back into those blind eyes.
She said, “Are you Jesus?”
He stopped in mid-stride and he wondered. Then slowly he made his way to the later flight with that question burning in his soul: “Are you Jesus?”
Do people mistake you for Jesus? That’s really what being a disciple is all about — to be so much like Jesus that people cannot tell the difference as we live and interact with a world that is blind to His love, life, and grace.
We may be the only Jesus that some people ever see in this life. Our actions may be the only Bible they will ever read.