THE PARADE OF MISFITS

By Pastor Hope 

"Look at that parade of misfits," I heard my neighbors sneer as we watched the first bunch of that rag-tag mob trudge into our town up the main road.

They were an odd-looking bunch.  Their clothes looked like Salvation Army issue, and there were so many wheelchairs, it looked like a flotilla of armored ships.  The rest of the misfits were walking, but no faster than their slowest members.  There were too many children and too many old people; they weren't going to get anywhere that way.

The troupe looked completely disorganized - probably because they had no leader to organize them.  They seemed to be headed more or less in one direction, but all the while children were running off every which way, peeking into old barns, jumping over creeks, or rushing over to confused onlookers with handfuls of wildflowers or pebbles of sandstone and quartz they had collected.  But somehow the children always made it back before the troupe got too far down the road.

Some of the misfits had the obvious look of mental retardation; others looked quite sick and were being cared for as they lay in carts pulled by others.  Some might have been ex-convicts, others perhaps high-priced ladies of the evening.  Some could have been corporate executives and others, elementary school teachers.  I couldn't imagine what had brought this mix-up of people together.

Finally, when one of the children darted over to me with a huge bouquet of dandelions, I asked, "Where are you going?"

She answered, "Wherever we are led."

"But who is leading you?" I wondered.

"The One Who Embraces All."

I wasn't learning much, so I tried another line of questioning.  "What is it you try to do whenever you go somewhere?"

"Find people."

"What people?"

"Anyone who needs to be found."

"And what do you do when you find them?" I had to ask.

"We invite them to join us."

"To become a misfit?"

"No, they're already misfits.  What they need is the parade."

"What in the world is a parade of misfits good for, anyway?" I asked with growing annoyance.

"It's the only place in the world where every person is important and needed, and it's the one place where the world can look to find all it needs to blossom and grow."

I shook my head, unable to believe what she said, wondering how so many people could have joined a parade that had no purpose, no direction, no end.

I heard my neighbors laughing and cursing and calling names as we watched the last of the misfits trying awkwardly to catch up with the rear of the parade.  "Thank God those people are gone," one of them said.  "Glad they don't live here; we've never had any trouble with our misfits."

I looked away from my neighbors and down at the dark skin of my paralyzed legs.  Then I looked back at the disappearing parade.  My wheelchair could not go fast enough.  I had been found!