The mother, knowing full well the complications having a new puppy would bring to a busy household, could not resist her son. "Okay, you can get the puppy, but I will expect you to take care of it."
"Yes, Mom, I will." Filled with excitement, the little boy ran to the pet shop to buy his new puppy.
After determining that the boy had enough money, the pet shop owner brought him to the window to choose his puppy. After a few minutes, the young boy said, "Um...I'll take the little one in the corner."
"Oh no," said the shop owner, "not that one; he's crippled. Notice how he just sits there; something is wrong with one of his legs, so he can't run and play like the rest of the puppies. Choose another one."
Without saying a word, the boy reached down and lifted his pant leg to expose a chrome leg brace to the owner.
"No," he said firmly, "I want the puppy in the corner."*
It turns out that what disqualified the puppy from being chosen by others is what most qualified him to be chosen by the little boy. It's amazing how few of us believe in the unqualified grace of God. Oh, yes, God loves us, as long as we're clean and whole and fixed and perfect. But it turns out that what disqualifies you and me from "churchianity" - the mess of our lives and our crippledness - is what most qualifies us to be chosen by Jesus.
"When the teachers of the law who were Pharisees saw him eating with the sinners and tax collectors, they asked his disciples: 'Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?' On hearing this, Jesus said to them, 'It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.' "
Mark 2:16-17
Selah.
*Anne Lamott, Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts On Faith (New York: Pantheon, 1999), 49-50.
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