One of my weaknesses is to have a cigar last thing at night. I used to smoke heavily but feel pretty good about having given up but I just hang on to one vestige of that past pleasure. A while back I went to Romania. I was staying with a family and I thought it wisest not to smoke in front of anyone. On the last evening I was taken to the station and while we waited for a train I thought I am going to have a smoke. The people seeing me off were young Christians on the evangelical end of the church. They started to give me a hard time quoting the body being the temple of the Holy Spirit. I happened to look behind me on the platform and there was one of the saddest sites. There was a pile of rags encasing a poor human form barely recognisable as human.
As the self righteous diatribe went on I wanted to ask them how they could ignore Jesus in the form of this sad man on this railway platform while ‘straining at gnats’ about my smoking. I don’t think my cigar smoking will keep me out of Heaven but ignoring the poor and hungry will. Matthew 25.35
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