This study is loosely based on the study More Like Jesus from Not Consumed.

Have you ever felt like an outcast? alone? rejected?

While disabled at a young age and having experienced a good share of being left out or overlooked, I had never experienced anything close to what happened at a conference many years ago.

My work schedule meant that I needed to arrive late. My compromised immune system meant wearing a health mask pre-pandemic. As I waited for the next session to start leaning against a wall in the hallway, I was wearing my health mask and three leg braces. (Yes, three.) People began to pour into the hallway as they left one room and went to another. I smiled, so excited to be at my first writer’s conference. Imagine my dismay when every single person briefly started at me, looked away, and moved to the other side of the hallway as they approached me, moving back after going around me. It was very, very obvious that they were avoiding me.

I was stunned and will never forget the feeling. I have never felt so lonely even through the last six years of isolation. Finally, the head of the conference came along and took me to a side room. She had seen what was happening and was concerned. She asked about the mask and then explained that people thought I was sick and contagious. Her kindness warmed my heart. (My family said I should write on the mask, “It’s not me, it’s you.” They know how to cheer me up!) After one brave soul befriended me and showed immense kindness and Christ-like love, others hesitantly came near and spoke to me briefly. I had never experienced anything like that before and hope to never experience it again.

I am thankful for that experience. “What?”, you ask, “Thankful?” God taught me so much from that rejection. It reminded me of the Good Samaritan when the religious leaders crossed to the other side and of the lepers in the Bible. They knew this type of rejection on a grand scale. My feeling of rejection was minor comparatively.

Jesus loves the outcast and shows us how to love them. Luke 5:12-13 shows His kindness to the lepers.

“12 And it came to pass, when he was in a certain city, behold a man full of leprosy: who seeing Jesus fell on his face, and besought him, saying, Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean.

¹³ And he put forth his hand, and touched him, saying, I will: be thou clean. And immediately the leprosy departed from him.”

Did you see it? Did you see what Jesus did? He touched the leper. There is power in touch. Jesus didn’t just speak to him, He touched the man. Can you imagine the touch of the Master’s hand after all the rejection? Jesus loved Him in his illness. He healed him.

May we be like Jesus and lift up those who are outcast and rejected. You do not know what a simple touch, text, call, or card will do!