We all face hard questions. Honest questions. Questions that can haunt our lives.
Am I a good person? Do I really matter? Does God see me? Is God good? If so why are there so many areas in our lives lye lame, with people passing us by, unable or unwilling to help us? It is in these moments we want someone willing to stop and notice us, to bend down and get into the dirt in our lives, to enter into our struggle and help us.
In Acts 3, we see Peter and John encounter a crippled man at the temple gate and they stopped. They noticed. They decided to make contact. Riches weren’t to them but the ability to value was, in Verses 6-7 of Acts they had no silver or gold, but what they did have they were willing to give to the lame beggar. With the authority of Jesus’s name He didn’t leave him to do it on his own, he assisted him, taking his right hand and giving him a helping hand. Peter had a hand to offer, and value to give.
They saw that a man was in need was worth touching. He was a man who needed someone to see him as a human being made in the image of God. He had so much more to offer. After he got up, he went into the temple courts praising and stirring up wonder and amazement about God. We also need to remember that we can get up. We can still up amazement and wonder about God. We can stir up the praise within us for God whatever it is were facing.
We are loved, and God has a plan for us. God wants to use others to help us see that and use us to help others to help us see that, and use us to help others see it in themselves. We should never doubt the power of one person reaching into the life of another with some written or spoken words of love, proclaiming in the name of Jesus Christ. That has the power to bring someone back on their feet.
From Pity to Praise 