Feeding the Lepers

While I was in India our team had the rare privelege of feeding lepers. A couple of times a month the ministry at India Gospel League goes around and picks up the lepers (who are somewhat like our homeless only more desperate) brings them to the center and gives them a great meal. The meal they are served is the traditional Indian wedding feast. It is a very moving experience. This is the fourth time I have had the chance to feed lepers. It really does seem like you step back in time to the Biblical era. I was looking at the people. The disease is really an aweful disease. Every once in a while I would catch a pair of eyes that were filled not with hopelessness but with joy and it was amazing. It was like they knew something I didn't. Something had happened inside of them that made the outside just not that important. There was an inherent beauty in their eyes, the kind of beauty that comes from being deeply loved. When Jesus walked the earth he healed a lot of lepers. Jesus came though, not to heal on the outside as wonderful as that must have been. He came to heal people on the inside. He came to give the joy of being more deeply loved than we ever dared to hope. So, I looked at those eyes full of joy and realized Jesus was still healing lepers. And the leper he healed was more like me than I ever would have thought.