Why did the Armadillo cross the Road?

We have all heard the "Why did the chicken cross the road?" jokes over the years. Yesterday I had the disgusting privilege of watching an armadillo try to cross the road. If I had been faster with my iPhone, I would've caught the picture of a wounded armadillo attempting to make it across three lanes of traffic. He wasn't badly injured, but you could tell that he had recently had a run-in with something bigger than himself. As cars zoomed by, he turned circles on the white dotted line separating two of the lanes. He would begin to go back to where he came from until another car came whizzing past. Frightened, he would waddle a few more feet the other way, trying to find a path to safety, only to be stopped again by another oncoming car.With this image imprinted on my mind as I drove past him, I could not help but see the parallel between his dilemma and ours. Armadillos are not the cutest creatures. They have a somewhat hard exterior shell and a nasty, pointy tail. I don't know anyone who would've wanted to go scoop him up off the pavement and hold him in their arms. Sure, seeing his wound meant that I felt bad for the little guy, but to touch him would be an altogether different feeling.So many of us have armadillos in our lives. They are the people that are unlovely and who we feel bad for, but our stomach turns at the thought of reaching out to them. The armadillo made a bad decision. He should've known better than to decide to cross a busy street. His predicament, while unfortunate, was of his own doing. We certainly don't wish him harm, but we also don't feel obligated to bail him out of his situation.As Christians, we are called to love on those who are unlovely. People are not exempt from the love of Christ simply because their wounds are self-inflicted. Yet, somehow, we can form a false sense of justice and avoid the one who has made poor decisions, withholding Christ’s love from them. We forget that we are each an armadillo. It is only by God’s grace that some of us happen to have had an easier time crossing the road. How dare those of us who had a crossing guard see us to the other side ever think that it was something we deserved!In Matthew 25, Jesus makes two almost identical statements as He shared a parable. To those who would enter the kingdom of heaven, the King in the parable declared, “Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.” Yet just a few verses later he says to those who would be sent from His presence, “Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.”We are called to love like Jesus and Jesus loved the unlovely. Who is the armadillo you need to go help? twitter | facebook