"Take my yoke upon you...."

"Jesus knows our every weakness. He understands our every experience. He knows about our every struggle, every lust, every lure, every appeal of temptation, every impure thought, every addiction, all of our ugliness, all our bad habits. He knows every sorrow, He knows our pain. Jesus understands our brokenness. Because He is fully divine, He is the Son of God."

Two days ago a friend posted that his brother came "out of the closet" in college about being gay. He described the hardships that this person went through and still endures today. Many responses were in judgment against this person, which really swayed me! One doesn't wake up one day and choose to be different from the norm. Yet there it was, many with quotations from the Bible about why this person was an abomination against society. It made me think of the many other people for whom society casts out: homeless, hungry, the obese, those who are alcoholic, drug addicts, mentally ill, veterans for whom life no longer holds any meaning, the uneducated, jobless, ethnic races, the list goes on. If you are different from me, then it seems that I have a reason to cast you out! 

The question lingers: what would Jesus do? Seems to me He had contempt for the scribes and Pharisees who stood in judgment of others, instead befriending those for whom society had cast out.

A statistic from my own state of Minnesota says that 28% of the children born today are minorities. Soon Caucasians will become a minority in our country as other groups are born in. Our economy is still teetering on the brink, yet it seems we have a "kill or be killed" attitude regarding money. The wealthy are hoarding their money at the expense of  the hard working middle class.Why should I care about you, when all I can do is worry about myself? My husband said he heard on the news about a store that was closing and how a millionaire bought out all of its merchandise, with the express intent of it going to those who needed it the most. Now that is true philanthropy!

I bring all of this up because as I was watching my three kittens the last few weeks grow, they already have a caste system in place. Oh yes, they do get along, but then again, they have their roles. The biggest one gets to the food dish first, so I have to make certain there is enough for the runt, who would have been cast out and left to die had they lived in the wild. The middle kitten decided he didn't want to wean and because of this, the other two refused to play or interact with it, almost as if they felt that soon he wouldn't be around, so why bother? I made every effort to get him to eat and found something he liked. Now because he is "one of the pack," he has been accepted back in. Unfortunately though, for many people, there is a caste system in place...remember the phrase, "the wrong side of the tracks?" and if you were "unfortunate" to be from "there," it was hard to fit in, be it at school, or anywhere.

Look around you and see how you interact with others. Do you shun the ones who are different from you, be it race, creed, income level? Or do you make every effort to reach out to them? What about the beggars, the homeless, the hungry? I know of a woman who made a huge deal out of the fact that she gave food to a food shelf. Turned out it was old, outdated food that no one wanted. If she wouldn't eat it, why would anyone else? Just because a person is on hard times doesn't make them any different from us....they still enjoy a good slice of cake, just as we all do! Income has no bearing on that, yet it seems that food shelves get so much mac n cheese....how about a nice can of soup with real meat chunks instead? 

We are all in this thing called life together...let's all embrace each other and shoulder that burden together. Build  one another up. Be that source of support. You just never know...someday, it may be you who is in need.