ELP! HELP!” SHE SCREAMED, BANGING ON THE CHURCH DOOR UNTIL AN elder opened it and invited her inside. Obviously homeless, the woman stood afraid, shivering from the cold and rain on that Friday evening in November. I was a deaconess and was there with others rehearsing the next day’s Communion service, but the elder was able to prepare her a meal. After she ate the food she reached out to me, calling me “Mommy” and the elder “Daddy.” She hugged me tight, not letting me go, and I began to feel nauseated from the stench of urine and vomit permeating from the drenched, filthy rags clinging to her frail body. Her breath was strong with the odor of alcohol and tobacco. I tried to push her away, but she wouldn’t let me go.
The church Community Services leader brought out a change of warm, clean clothes. Our visitor immediately and enthusiastically tried to put them on over the filthy ones she wore, but we told her she first needed to wash herself in the restroom. She obliged, and after washing her body she put on the clean clothes. She looked like a new person.
She now was calmer and more sober, crying tears of joy and repeatedly thanking us for our generosity. I took from my purse a small bottle of perfume and handed it to her. She clutched it excitedly, wearing a big smile. It was as if I had given her a million dollars.
The text in Matthew 25:35, 36, 40 came to mind, where Jesus said, “For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me. . . . Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.”
Before the woman left we prayed with her, told her about Jesus’ love and sacrifice for her, gave her the book Steps to Christ, and invited her to come back to church the next day. I haven’t seen her since, but I’ll never forget the wonderful lesson of love the Lord taught me through that woman.
Agape, unconditional love, is the kind God bestows on us. Although the woman continued holding me tightly and calling me “Mommy,” I tried to push her away. But then I heard the Spirit of God say, “Don’t push her away. Hold and love her as I hold, love, and forgive you while you are yet in your sins. When the stench of your layered, filthy rags of iniquity is offensive to Me, I never push you away.”
The prophet Isaiah says, “All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags” (Isa. 64:6).
As I listened to the Spirit’s still, small voice speak to me, I not only refrained from pushing her away, but found myself crying and holding on to her as I wanted God to hold me. I cried to Him, asking Him to forgive me—and felt assured that He did.
I used to believe that Communion service was only for those who had offended a church member, giving us an opportunity to wash one another’s feet and ask for forgiveness. Before this experience I felt I didn’t really need my feet washed. But now, every time I participate in the Communion service, I do so with great contrition of heart as I reflect on that cold, rainy November night when the Lord stopped by our church in the person of that homeless woman to reveal to me the true condition of my soul.
What an encouragement it is to know that “if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).
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Yvonne M. White is a freelance writer living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. This article was published January 21, 2010.
