Your Eyes Look Familiar

It is a typical summer day in Bangkok. I try to cool myself by fanning my face with a magazine. It doesn’t work.
Fortunately, an occasional breeze wafts up from the open windows of the stopped bus. The moving air fans me as I stand in the aisle.

I stare at a woman with a window seat. When the wind whips through her black hair, I groan enviously. “Why couldn’t I be that lucky?”

I think to myself. “Please, lady! Please get up so I can sit down! I’ve had a hard day, and these shoes are killing me! I need a break!” Somehow I hope she will read my mind. But she just stares at me and then looks away.

Then I spot a vacant seat near the open ?door of the bus. “Aha! Relief!” I mutter. Ignoring the looks of the other people on the bus, I run to the seat and sit down. Sighing, I close my eyes.

Minute after minute goes by. I’m oblivious to my surroundings.

Suddenly a barrage of sound slams into me. My eyes spring open to investigate. The bus has stopped at the Klong Tuey Market, and an army of chattering people now push into the once peaceful bus.

One person catches my attention – an old, decrepit woman. She wears faded clothes frayed at the hems. And her hair, a shock of white, frames a face imprinted with lines of time. Lines that fan out and spread like cobwebs from her eyes, forehead, and mouth. The wrinkles seem to reveal that she has had a life of ceaseless worry and menial work.

But it’s her expressive dark eyes that keep my attention riveted to her. They are eyes of intense pain.

I tear my gaze from her. For the next few seconds I stare out the window without really seeing anything. The woman’s image lingers.

All of a sudden the bus lurches, and a warm body is thrown against me. I reach out automatically to catch the figure. Slowly the person regains balance and straightens up. And I see it’s her.

She looks at me with those unforgettable eyes. Then she speaks, “Thank you,” she says.

“No problem,” I reply, but I really want to ask her, “What happened in your life to cause you such obvious pain? Tell me! I want to know!” My tongue thirsts to throw out questions. But I remain silent.

Then I see her wobble around on scarred and swollen feet as the bus driver hits the brakes. I think to myself, “Why doesn’t somebody get up and let her sit down!” I pivot around in my seat, looking from person to person. No one makes a move.

“I can’t believe you all! You’re not going to get up for her?” I cry silently. “Where is your compassion?”

“Where is your compassion?” a quiet voice asks from my brain. “What about the love that you, a Christian, should have for others?”
I recognize my conscience. But all the accumulated weariness in me surfaces. And I think to myself, “Why should I always have to be the one sacrificing for others? I’m always walked on for being so nice! I’m tired too, you know. My feet are killing me, and it must be at least 100 degrees right now! I need to sit down!”

Silence. Then I hear another voice in my mind, with words I recognize from the Bible. “When, Lord, did we ever see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick in prison, and we would not help you?”

A pause roars in my ears. Then I hear the reply, “I tell you, whenever you refused to help one of these least important ones, you refused to help me.”

I catapult out of the seat, my mind burning with those words. The old woman looks at me with confusion. But comprehension dawns on her, and she slumps into the seat.

Sweat streaks down her withered face, and she smiles. The beauty of that toothless and decayed grin radiates through me, and I feel cheap and ashamed.

“Thank you,” she whispers.

I hesitate. “No problem.” Quickly I turn away to hide the guilt in my eyes. And as the minutes tick by, I deliberately look everywhere except in her direction.

Then the bus slows to a stop, and people brush past me on their way out. And I know—I just know—that she has left the bus. For some strange reason I want to look at her one more time.

Staring out the window, I squint to catch a last glimpse of the lonely figure. She trudges up the street. Then her image begins to blur, and I begin to see, instead, a Man. Born and raised in a small town of Galilee. A Man who loved and gave, and in return received betrayal and death.

And I know without a doubt that the pain in that old woman’s eyes could also be seen in that Man’s eyes. As He hung on the cross dying, He knew all about it. And that pain is still in His eyes as He sees His hurting children, like this woman – and as He sees us betray Him day by day, minute by minute, when we pass Him by, He gives us chances every day to reach out to Him by helping others.

The bus hurtles on, leaving behind one old woman. And it takes with it a disciple who almost passed her Master by.