I have a vision. It is of all of us standing before the Lord on judgment day. And the Lord will say: “I was hungry and you fed me, thirsty and you gave me drink, naked and you clothed me, homeless and you sheltered me, imprisoned and you visited me.”
Puzzled, we will respond: “When, Lord, when did I see you hungry?”
And the Lord will say: “How could you ask? You of the three-and-a-half million peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, how could you even ask?”
But thirsty, Lord?
“It was in the Kool-Aid that came in with the summer heat and the flies and left mud on your floor and fingerprints on your walls and you gave me a drink.”
“Naked, Lord; homeless?”
“I was born to you naked and homeless and you sheltered me, first in wombs and then in arms, and clothed me with your love. And you spent the next 20 years keeping me in jeans.”
“But imprisoned, Lord? I know I didn’t visit you in prison.”
“I was never in prison. Oh, yes, for I was imprisoned in my littleness, behind the bars of a crib and I cried out in the night and you came. I was imprisoned inside an 11-year-old body that was bursting with so many new emotions I didn’t know who I was and you loved me into being myself. And I was imprisoned behind my teenage rebellion, my anger and my stereo, and you waited outside my locked door for me to let you in.
“Now my beloved, enter into the joy which has been prepared for you from all eternity.”
Amen