This was a post from Troy and Shari's blog - they are missionaries in Mongolia. To see their blog click here.

As much as you did not do..unto the least of these, you did not do unto me.

The setting was a small closet size shed. The wind was blowing right through the cracks and making my hair pick up. Dirt floor. No stove for a fire so my hands and legs were getting cold just standing in there. On the shelf there were two spoons,a knife, cups, a pan and the food package that we had given the mother just a few days before when she was at Flourishing Future asking for help.

The mother was speaking to us, words that are too awful to repeat. Her many words added up to one tragic story of rejection, sadness and poverty. As if her whole life were a slow moving train towards defeat and now it was picking up speed, going downhill fast...and she was in her own small way doing all she could to put the brakes on.

I could not read Troy's face. At one point I wondered if he was even listening to her.

In the end, I put my arm around her small shoulders. As if my touch unlatched a forbidden door, where she kept her pain, she began to cry out in great sobs.

The whole time I was thinking..."how?" "How will we ever be able to help?"

I get this feeling at times, like I want to run. I want to run away from the things I hear and see. Yet, Gods hand continually holds me steady. I hear him say..."don't run...stop and look, look at what I have asked your eyes to see."

When we got in the car to leave it was the usual silence that befalls us after such visits. I wanted to scold Troy for his lack of compassion. He had seemed agitated, in a hurry to leave.

Then he spoke up first.

"We can't leave them there tonight Shari. We have no other choice....we have to bring them home to our hasha."

I had been mistaken. Troy was more then there in the moment. He had been overcome with God's compassion. He was about to break his own rules about bringing people to OUR home.

Not so long ago, a less affected Troy, had said, "You can't just bring them into the house...our house would be overcome with poor people! There are far to many. We have to deal with the problem logically."

Well, logically had just become illogical to him.

I began to remind him of all the good reasons NOT to bring a stranger into you home. I'll leave it to your own intellect, I'm sure you can even come up with a few I missed.

I heard his voice crack as if he were holding back emotion and he said to me, "In as much as you did not do unto the least of these, you did not do unto me."

It silence me.

He was quoting from Mathew 25. It's the story I really don't like to think on too often. The one that kind of rips the rug out from all of my justifications. It's the story that messes up the pretty picture of my plans. It's the story that can make you look like a complete fool...if you live by it. If you believe its words to be true.

I do.

"Shari, if we say, God Bless you, be at peace...and leave her there in that shack with her son, my conscience will not let me sleep tonight...will yours?"

As I prepared the ger in our hasha for this new family God was challenging me even further.

"Put your good blankets on the bed."

Instead of the older blankets, I went out to gather up some of my favorite ones.

"Not the half empty soap...give her your new full bottle."

So I put out the new soap, the best hand towel...my favorite tea...

Until finally the ger looked so warm, toasty and inviting I kinda wished I was living in it.

I prayed.
"Thank you Lord. Thank you for reaching down and putting me here...where I can not hide or ignore the pain. I am a blessed woman to look and see and KNOW that YOU are capable of taking even the darkest life and making it glow again."

My phone rang, it was Troy. He had left an hour before to go get them.

"They can not come tonight...they are working."

Later I learned that they work at night, in the wood market, cleaning it up...gathering little pieces of left over wood so they can make an outside fire for their supper.

The ger sits ready...maybe another solution will present itself before they actually take residence in my yard...maybe it is the solution.

Regardless...we all must obey. We all must live Mathew 25 in our own everyday lives. For there is always someone hungry, lonely, sick or in prison...and God always asking us, "What will you do unto or not unto me?"