Matthew Kelly, in Rediscover Jesus, tells the powerful story of a businessman named Paul who was in Brooklyn, N.Y., attending the most important meeting of his life. It had gone well, and he could hardly wait to tell his wife and his boss. As he rushed out of the Brooklyn office building with his team, they noticed a vacant cab – a rare sight during the rush hour.
Eager to get to the airport to catch their flight home, they bolted toward the cab, yelling to get the driver’s attention. But as they made their way across the sidewalk, they inadvertently knocked over a small produce stand. The rest of the team seemed oblivious until Paul stopped and turned around to go back.
From beside the taxi the others called out to Paul, “Come on, you will miss your flight.”
“Go ahead without me,” Paul replied as he made his way back across the street toward the sidewalk covered with produce. At that moment, he realized that the woman who had been behind the produce stand was blind. She was just standing there crying softly with tears running down her face.”
“It’s OK, it’s OK.” Paul said to her as he got down on his hands and knees and began picking up the fruit and vegetables. There were a hundred people passing in each direction, but nobody else stopped to help. They just scurried off to wherever they were going.
When the fruit was all back on the stand, Paul began neatly organizing it, setting aside anything that was spoiled. Now he turned to the woman and asked, “Are you OK?”
She nodded through her tears. Then, reaching for his wallet, he took out some bills and passed them to the woman saying, “This money should cover the damages.”
With that, Paul turned and began to walk away.
“Mister,” the woman called after him. Paul paused and turned around. And she said, “Are you Jesus?”
“Oh, no,” he replied. The woman only nodded and continued, “I only ask because I prayed for Jesus to help me as I heard my fruit falling all over the sidewalk.”
Paul turned to leave again, only now his eyes began to fill with tears. For a long time he wandered around looking for a taxi. After finally finding one, he sat in bumper-to-bumper traffic all the way to the airport. He had missed his flight, and because it was Friday night, all the other flights were full. He spent the night in a hotel by the airport. This gave him time to think. He couldn’t get one question out of his head: “When was the last time someone confused me with Jesus?”
It is a powerful story, isn’t it? We live in a busy world, don’t we? The demands of our job plus other interests require the expenditure of so much energy and time that we often fail to see individuals around us who have needs to which we do not respond. The result is that we miss opportunities to be an ambassador for the King of Kings. People with needs remain unmet because we are too busy to see and are not concerned.
II Corinthians 5:20 says that every Christian is an ambassador for Christ. Therefore, as Christians let us ask ourselves: “Am I ever so busy that I fail to see human needs, walk by them, and leave them unmet?”
The Paper Pulpit 
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