Mayor's Compassion for the Poor
Poem★★★★‘The great-hearted mayor of a city in India, who had cleaned up vast portions of the slums and in their stead had built lovely, neat cottages and apartments, said to me: “Sometimes I walk around the remaining sections of the city at night and say to myself, ‘If the people would only let me, I could do anything for them.’ But they won’t let me.
They are naturalized in their filth, and cling to it, though it kills them off like flies.” How Christ-like that great, lonely figure, sighing over people who would not ac- cept the life he offered! Christ must be doing that today! He sees us with our unworkable ways of life, running into dead ends, and our lives themselves, and He says again: “Seek ye first the kingdom of God ... and all these things shall be added unto you.”
But we are seeking other things first, and all these things are subtracted from us.
Rev. E. Stanley Jones, D.D.
The point
Like a compassionate mayor who cannot help a people too attached to their own filth, Christ offers a better life but is refused by those who seek other things first.