Falling Inside The Black

(photo by Katherine Chase)

I was searching for some photos to use on a web site when I happened upon this beauty. I like the photo because it tells a story. A sad story though. A story about being left behind or falling through the cracks perhaps. A sign of what's wrong in our country. And what's wrong with our hearts.

I was in town this past Friday, measuring up a building for some gratis work my company is doing at a local non-profit. I was talking to their volunteer coordinator about a young man the had been there as a client. He struggled with some mental health issues. They tried everything to help this guy but nothing seemed to work. He either couldn't be helped or wasn't interested in being helped at all.

Last week he went missing from the facility he was at. Three days later they found his body in a nearby river. Sad. There simply is no helping some people I guess, but that doesn't stop people from wanting to help or from trying to. It breaks people's hearts when they hear that there is no longer any hope.

I look at this photo and a verse keeps repeating in my head. It's Jesus speaking to His disciples.

"The poor you will always have with you." - Matthew 26:11

Why did Jesus say that?

I think he said it because the sick and the poor WILL always be with us . . . FOR us . . . as a test. The sick and the poor in our lives may be there for us so God can see just how we treat them. A test to see how "healthy" WE are, how "RICH" we are.

Are we spiritually rich enough to have compassion on someone who has a mental illness? Are we spiritually healthy enough to have that desire to help the sick and the hurting?

The news these days is filled with people who are struggling to fit in. When no one notices them or seems to care about them, they lash out at society. They fight back, in their usually fatal way, at the very people (in general) who have abandoned them. Even at the ones who could help them!

We, as a society, are failing the Jesus test. We choose to ignore the mentally challenged and often just stand by as we watch them slip through the cracks and fall into the black abyss below. We need more people to be Jesus in the lives of the mentally ill. More people to lift them up in prayer. More people to fill the cracks . . . with hope.

Falling Inside The Black - Skillet
My Son was a Columbine Shooter - Sue Klebold