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| By Carol Marine on Daily Paintworks |
Confidence is the ability to look out at the world around you; to calmly examine it; to take it in, and not look back. By this I mean not to twist your gaze backwards into your skull. Little children have this ability. They are unaware of themselves, and see the world out there as it is. They see the person with one arm and accept that they have one arm without any augmented thinking. Confidence is the realisation that I have an equal right to be, just like you. I am interested in you, in all people, without discrimination. I have the capacity to be interested in everyone I meet today. I hold out the hand of friendship. If you refuse to take it, or you take it in bad spirit, that's sad, because I am open to you, but I can't make you like me.
Jesus shows us how to treat all as equal. In Luke 7 it is recorded how he mixes with the most sophisticated, and least refined in the same day. Each was valued. Each was understood.
A Pharisee invited Jesus to have dinner with him. So Jesus went to the Pharisee’s home and got ready to eat.
When a sinful woman in that town found out that Jesus was there, she bought an expensive bottle of perfume. Then she came and stood behind Jesus. She cried and started washing his feet with her tears and drying them with her hair. The woman kissed his feet and poured the perfume on them.
The Pharisee who had invited Jesus saw this and said to himself, “If this man really were a prophet, he would know what kind of woman is touching him! He would know that she is a sinner.”
Jesus said to the Pharisee, “Simon, I have something to say to you.”
“Teacher, what is it?” Simon replied.
Jesus told him, “Two people were in debt to a moneylender. One of them owed him five hundred silver coins, and the other owed him fifty. Since neither of them could pay him back, the moneylender said that they didn’t have to pay him anything. Which one of them will like him more?”
Simon answered, “I suppose it would be the one who had owed more and didn’t have to pay it back.”
“You are right,” Jesus said.
He turned toward the woman and said to Simon, “Have you noticed this woman? When I came into your home, you didn’t give me any water so I could wash my feet. But she has washed my feet with her tears and dried them with her hair. You didn’t greet me with a kiss, but from the time I came in, she has not stopped kissing my feet. You didn’t even pour olive oil on my head, but she has poured expensive perfume on my feet. So I tell you that all her sins are forgiven, and that is why she has shown great love. But anyone who has been forgiven for only a little will show only a little love.”
Then Jesus said to the woman, “Your sins are forgiven.”
Some other guests started saying to one another, “Who is this who dares to forgive sins?”
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