Mere Mortals

"There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations–these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit–immortal horrors or everlasting splendours. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of the kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously–no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. And our charity must be real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinners–no mere tolerance, or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment. Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses. If he is your Christian neighbour, he is holy in almost the same way, for in him also Christ vere latitat, the glorifier and the glorified, Glory Himself, is truly hidden." ~C.S. Lewis

I discovered this gem of a quote recently and have been struck by just how seriously we as Christians must take our responsibilities to actively live out the Gospel. While at the core I embrace the Biblical truth that each human being will either spend all of eternity in blessed glory with Christ or in Satan's horrible damnation, are my actions really driven by this fact? Do I love unbelievers and believers alike on the basis of their value as creations of God and their eternal destiny either for Heaven or Hell?

While this hard yet beautiful truth applies to all of life, in our interactions everyday with lost souls around us, its meaning in relation to orphan care has been particularly striking to me lately. The world treats so many needy, "unlovely" children as earthly rubbish to be either destroyed in the womb or left on the fringes of society to gradually fade away in isolation and helplessness. Too often we treat orphans (either explicitly or implicitly) as if this broken, messed-up life is all they'll have. We either conveniently "forget" about them, or if we do get involved, just offer a band-aid of hope that it supposed to fix their gaping chasm of hurt and need long enough for them to just get through this life on earth. We as Christians are just as guilty of this distorted perspective as anyone else.

What would happen if we really stared hard into these precious faces and became overwhelmed by the fact that they were eternal souls destined for either "immortal horror or everlasting splendor"? What if we responded with real charity and "costly love" as Lewis describes? What if we looked past their broken exterior to see them as holy objects, made in the very image of God Himself? What if we modeled and held out for them the glorious Hope that we have in Christ? This life is not the final say....praise God! There is a Savior to cover all our sins through His blood on Calvary, a God who promises to "make all things new," and a Heaven where He promises to wipe every tear from our eyes and fill us with the glory of His presence forever. These children that we sponsor, visit, pray for, or adopt are all immortal beings that, through God's grace, we may spend all eternity with. What if we really grasped that?

There are no mere mortals. When we catch hold of this incredible truth it conforms our hands and hearts to serve the fatherless as Jesus would and enables Him to work through us in the shaping of a human being's eternal destiny.....*W*O*W*!