I had an experience today that I have not had, probably forever. I gave someone a ride to the Behavioral Health place and stayed with them while they went for a short private interview and then a group session. I did not go into these meeting places, but only into the waiting room where they were called back for these meetings. I had to get up earlier than I normally do to get this person to this meeting on time, so I was sleepy, and in fact I slept part of the time while I sat in the warm room waiting. I was with people, some of whom did not smell very nice. They don't have the same concept of grooming and cleaning as some of the rest of us do. In fact the person I was with moved twice; one because of the bad odor, and once because of the obnoxious behavior of one of the people coming to this meeting. I saw one person who was going around to various people sharing things the rest of us would keep to ourselves. One guy wanted everyone to know that his father had a heart attack, fell, broke his foot or ankle, and had to go to another city to have his bones corrected. He also wanted to show everyone his new pair of gloves, and boy was he proud of them. I saw one person who seemed to be agitated because of slowness of a pharmacy. I saw one person who used to be a respected police officer, who came to a school I was teaching at to investigate a possible crime by another teacher, but now he is not much different than any of the other people there with problems, and I am not sure how that happened, except that age resulting from living, and also living in sin has the effect of deteriorating people. He at one time was respected, dressed well, and was professional, but now is is among the people who do not smell well and are not well behaved which is against everything he stood for at one time. I recognized many of these people as they came to both our Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners put on by our church for basically anyone in the community with a special invitation to people who were down on their luck, as most of these people are, and the ones who are not down on their luck have problems, many of them being there because they were ordered to clean up their lives by the court system. One overridding factor in all of this is that Jesus loves all these people, and He wants them to come to Him for rest for their weary souls. He does not look down on any of them for the way they smell or the way they act. He would like to take them, make them His own, and clean up their lives, help them to dress well, and bathe, and get rid of their sinful habits of drinking alcohol, using tobacco and other drugs, and help them to learn to behave appropriately.
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