I sat for three hours in a reception area at St. James, Hospital, Leeds (aka 'Jimmy's) while my son had treatment on his eyes earlier this week . It gave me much opportunity to people watch. The anxious, the talkative, the lost, the eccentric (an elderly man who filled his wheeled grocery bag with packets of crisps), the purposeful, the hurting;- all human life was there- red and yellow, black and white as the none-too subtle Sunday-school song has it.
And yes, they are precious in his (that is, Jesus) sight, to continue that song, although I found myself wondering, after the book I had brought was finished, and I resorted to people watching, what barriers these precious ones had found in life, who had put them in an 'out crowd' who had welcomed them, if at all, into an 'in-crowd', The shabbily-dressed old man who so carefully laid out on a seat some yards from me the eighteen on so packets of salt-and-vinegar crisps; who would give him a wide berth in daily life?
How good we are at assumptions! -when within the kingdom, the only one we need is 'all are precious in his sight'. The over-dramatised colours-red and yellow, black and white- can be erased after that.
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