the least of these

last night tony campolo came and spoke at group. The last thing i thought i would be doing in response is blogging about it, but what can i say he had some good ideas. One of his main ideas is that as christians we are called to serve the "least of these": the people that are marginalized and rejected by others. All too often I have the tendency to pat myself on the back and say "well done, Leah" because of my experience with working with the disabled, and then a thought struck me today as I was pondering whether or not I had more to learn in this area ( and i definitely do now that I think about it ). Maybe the least of these is different for every person. For some the least of these may be a person of another ethnicity, for some the person with a different sexual orientation, for some the developmentally disabled, for some the prostitutes, for me its a wide range of people that I like to call annoying and that I think I am better than. Just to clarify I'm not arguing that these people are actually lesser, I'm just saying that they may be viewed that way in another person's eyes. So whoever you view as the least worthy person, whoever that may be, that is the people group you should serve, and that is where you will serve Christ. By denying yourself and seeing God at work in the lives of the people whom it is hardest for you to connect with is where you will truly become a servant. I guess this is one of the reasons why I hate people telling me how wonderful I am that I work with the disabled. Because it isn't about a matter of forcing myself to serve people that I don't want to or making myself like the marginalized. It wasn't a stretch for me at all. I just fell in love. If I hadn't I would have been like anyone else. In fact, I probably would have given up and found something different. This is why I have decided that there must be some other group of people that maybe society itself hasn't marginalized, but that I myself have.