Loving the Unloveable

The other night I was listening to a Catholic radio program in the car. The hosts began the show with something called The Face Prayer:

Heavenly Father, I embrace your grace this day,
So that I might not:
Think of another,
Speak to another or
Touch another,
without first looking for
Your Face in the other.
I ask all this through
Jesus Christ:
God Incarnate,
God with Skin,
God made Poor,
God with a Face.

Amen
-James Pinto, Jr, MEV

It is a new prayer to me. At least I do not remember encountering in the past. When I heard it I thought back to a conversation I was having with some of my family members on Superbowl Sunday. We were talking about a guy we used to see around the neighborhood.
 
He was a man without a face. Literally. Where is face used to be was a large healed hole.

I am not sure why this guy did not have a face anymore. Some people say he had bone cancer. Some people say he tried to shoot himself in the head. Whatever the cause, the outcome was tragic.

We used to see him walking around town, on the bus, and in grocery stores. Twice I'd seen him in the Psychiatric Emergency Room when I was being treated for serious episodes of major depression.

Why was he there? I have no idea but I can only imagine how lonely and sad daily life was, wandering around a college town full of other young people who were healthy and whole. I can only imagine him looking at the women he would never date and wondering what the point of life was anymore. I can only imagine how he found the strength to get out of bed everyday.

It is easy to dismiss someone like him. To say things like, "Well, if he shot himself, he brought it on himself." To laugh at him and call him names. It is easy to turn our eyes away from the cavity in his head. It is easy to think that someone like that is unloveable.

But no one ever said following Christ was easy. Jesus didn't say to only love the good looking, the successful, and the well balanced. He said to love others. No matter what.

In his book, Loving People, author John Townsend says this:

"The more we require that the other person be loveable in order for us to care, the less loving we are."

That's is a serious statement. It's also a powerful and challenging truth that threatens to expose quite an ugly side to ourselves. If asked we would probably call ourselves loving people. But how about when we are confronted with the ugly, the disfigured, the downtrodden, the misfit, or the obnoxious?

Once he approached me in the frozen food section of Meijer's one night. He gave me a note asking for money. A note because he could not speak clearly. I would love to say that I completely channeled Mother Teresa on this one. I would love to say that I offered him compassion. I would love to say that I gave him some money.

Instead, I was the deer in the headlights. My mind went blank with surprise: "No, I did not have any money on me. I wasn't carrying any cash. I'm sorry." He nodded thank you and went off to ask someone else.

There was an ATM in the store. I could have given him a twenty, easily. I could have offered to pick up his grocery tab. But I was so taken aback by his appearance that I couldn't think clearly.

Some people say love is a feeling. You either experience it or you don't. But I think that love is a choice. It is a challenge we face everyday of our lives on earth. To love when we least feel like loving. To see Jesus even when the other person doesn't have a face.