If you didn't read that earlier post, Kristi is blind and in a wheelchair. Our church auditorium is hard to navigate if you are in a wheelchair. So I found Kristi on the first Sunday I was looking for her along the back wall, by herself.
"Do you sit with anyone?" I asked after we had visited for a bit.
"No, I don't have any friends to sit with," she replied.
"Do you like sitting back here?"
"No," she said. "I get lonely. Plus, when people walk by they bump into me and step on my feet. But I don't mind."
The space along the wall at the back of the auditorium is very tight and after services it gets pretty congested. A wheelchair in this small space is an issue, so I could see people accidentally bumping into Kristi or inadvertently stepping on her feet. Not anyone's fault. Just a tight space.
"Well, would you like to sit with my family? Jana, Brenden, Aidan and I?"
"Yes. I'd like that a lot."
And so that's what we are doing. Kristi sits with us. We found a space--with the help of Dickie and Jim--where Kristi can sit alongside our family in the auditorium.
This is not a particularly heroic act. It's a small and simple thing, sitting with someone at church. An example of "the little way."
I mainly share this to ponder how we see the world, or don't see it. I've been going to Highland for years and I never saw Kristi.
How did I eventually see her? I started asking myself this question: "If Jesus is 'the least of these' who might that be in the Highland auditorium?"
The answer came: How about, there, with Kristi?
With the blind girl, being stepped on, without a friend to sit with, alone in the wheelchair.
Start there.
...
Post-Script:
I wrote this post about two months ago. Since then I've discovered that Kristi wasn't as "unseen" by the Highland family as I had assumed and as she had described that day. To be sure, Kristi is not widely sought out or spoken to. But there is a small group of people at Highland, mainly those associated with the Freedom Fellowship crew, who know Kristi and approach her for conversation.
Regardless, I want to be clear that this post isn't about how Highland did or didn't see Kristi but how I, Richard, never saw Kristi. And that now I do.
