Thursday, November 12, 2009

Who are the "Least of These"?

I'm rethinking my view on who this applies to, because maybe you (and definitely I) thought "the Least of These" were the guys and gals who were down on their luck, the homeless, the starving and related, right? Well...maybe not.

On Saturday night I hung out with a friend and his friends in downtown Naperville, dining at the awesome Ted's Montana Grill. Afterwards we just walked around the downtown area, talking and relaxing, it was near the end of our walking when we met Doug.

Doug was dressed in formal attire; it was evident he had a few too many to drink, his language was slurred and his wife made sure to take the car keys from him as he decided to talk to us for a while. He went on to talk about how he remembers when he was our age, it came across as a drunken spiel, but the heart of the matter was that even in his booze fueled nostalgic moment, something was missing in his life.

So maybe being the least of these actually has to do more with depravity or the absence of something or someone bigger in one's life, whether cognitively recognized or not, perhaps that makes someone the least of these.
As a result, my ideas as who the least of these are has expanded, yet I think for people who are in the same boat as Doug we overlook them because either they hide it well or they're the kind of characters that come out on the weekends only.
So I guess I will continue to help out the least of these, to which some hide their problems better while others wear it on their sleeves.

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