Lame or what?

Lame...what does it mean. Oh God am i lame?? I know that i have been and i remember what it feels like to be in depression, to be in search of identity, to long for acceptance and fear rejection- is this my lameness?

I guess it hurts to see lame people all the time and everywhere you look. And i just feel like it takes energy and compassion that i do not have to reach out and touch people. And then the concern is that what if my experience is not adequate enough to speak to somebody's hurt and their pain as well. Granted i have faced my storms, but that is exactly it they are mine and not anyone else's. In any given 5 minute conversation how can the impact of this penetrate into the reality of their situation.

Lame. Am i still sitting at the gate begging for alms, hopping to find what i think i need and want but never getting enough of it? Show me in the past lame situations that i have found myself in. Predicaments that i wish were not my own and others that i can talk about so easily without a blink. It's so easy to sermonise but when it comes down to the crunch do i know what it feels like to be lame? To be in a state where you think that you are surviving and that you know how to take care of your needs and satisfy your life. To be in a state where people feel like they are doing you a favour by just passing every once in a while and tossing the odd coin your way, the stiff-upper-lipped encouragement. To be in a position where you see yourself always sitting at the gate and never actually being able to make it inside the temple yourself, never being able to enter into the spirit and experience of worship. To not have the experience that the disciples of Jesus Christ are supposed to have and to be lacking the power in your personal life to get up and walk! Hmmm do i know what that feels like?

The thing that puzzles me is how easy it is to forget, or want to forget, that I've been lame before. And could it even be that i am lame but don't know it, hmmm? Through the experience of being lame in some way, the disciples of Christ are able not only to spot lame persons but the compassion that they have far exceeds the disgraceful or embarrassing sight and scenes that lameness can produce.