For modern-day Samaritans, His love (and ours, too)

Bohemian Rhapsody is the story of the band Queen and, in particular, its lead singer, Freddie Mercury. I have watched it three times now, and I can’t quit listening to their music.

This weekend, we watched Rocket Man, the story of Elton John’s life and his rise to fame. I like some of Elton’s songs.

Freddie Mercury, of the pop band Queen, performing on stage during the Live Aid concert.

Both stories are heartbreaking. In both accounts, the men pursued a lifestyle of drugs, homosexuality, and promiscuity. In both stories, they were alienated from their parents, denied the love of the very ones who should have had the most to give. And in both stories, they soared to the heights of worldwide fame and wealth.

Both rejected, both vastly talented. Both, mostly, lonely.

My own extended family circle includes a homosexual and a transgender, a young man and young woman whom I love. They’re part of my village. Which brings me to what I’m thinking on just now.

What if these souls are our modern-day Samaritans? The untouchables. The outcasts. The Ones With Whom We Can’t Eat Or We’ll Get Dirty. The ones no one wants to really see. And so we cross to the other side and pass on by.

We can “break bread” with gluttons, with gossipers, and with the proud, but from these lonely, rejected ones we turn away. The outside of the cup is clean, but the inside is rotting away.

I know it’s really messy. I know that pain can make people unpleasant. I know that hurting people hurt others, for that is what they know. It’s so hard to navigate this stuff.

I know that, too.

I don’t have many answers, and maybe I don’t have to. Maybe, for now, it’s enough to simply love the ones I’m with. To be able and willing to put my two mother arms around the souls He sends. To be quick to speak those words of life when I feel that holy nudge. To receive each wand’ring one into my mother heart. To say their names in prayer.

I’m too small to carry the weight of it all, but I’m big enough to carry them to Him. Oh, yes, I am. And yes, I can.

“Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so. (Broken) ones to Him belong. We are weak, but He is strong.”

For the hurting and lost,

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