Just Outside Your Gated Community

Just Outside Your Gated Community

(“Child, remember that during your lifetime you received good things, whereas Lazarus received terrible things. Now Lazarus is being comforted and you are in great pain.” Luke 16:25b)

It is the worst kind of danger to hear the beggar at the door and
keep on eating your lamb chops and your double chocolate cake, all washed down
with tankards of champagne.
It is the heinous dis-hearing. It is the disheartened ignorance. It is the
fourth story suite that makes the silence complete. You know he is there,
but now you cannot hear his cries of hunger. You can only see the dogs
licking his open wounds while you suck the repast’s grease from your fingers.
You have saturated your blood vessels so completely that
your fine dining will leave you dying within months. A change in menu
might solve
your issues and his.
But you turn the music up louder, the songs from your teens that once
meant everything to you. A forgotten love. An easy day along the sea.
A comrade in arms when you lived on rations and hunted rabbits to
supplement your meager provisions. It was sport for you. You never knew
true hunger.

But he does, just outside your gated community. Didn’t someone tell you
about him?
Did you dismiss him as just another vagrant trying to make a buck without
putting in a single day’s work?

I saw him yesterday, just a block from your home. His eyes were bright,
his gait was labored, his breath was shallow and he winced with every step.
He was relentless. Life and death could happen within the same moment
for him.
I gave him what I had and hoped you would give him more from you
monstrous stores.

The next day I rang at your gate. I hoped to placate the antimony
that had taken the place of your heart. They told me you were gone,
your residence was empty, your soul was somewhere below.

I wished no harm to you. But damn it! He did not need to die:
And you could have seen to that.
But damn it! You did not need to die, and he could have helped
with that.

Live awhile in the flames of your choices. He is comforted as never before.
One day the kingdom may redraw the designs we think prove that we
have it all.

Stand outside your gate before it is too late. Learn his name. The one he
has now. Not the one before he had a face.
Listen to his story. You may both find your thirst quenched
this side of death.