The Temple Steps

“And Jesus said to him, ‘Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.’” — Matthew 8:20 (ESV)

Taylor was travelling overland to the city of Ningpo, carrying nearly everything he owned in China — his watch, surgical instruments, books, bedding — with a hired servant looking after the luggage. Partway through the journey, the two got separated. Taylor walked ahead, expecting the servant to follow with the coolies carrying the bags. The servant never came. As the day wore on, Taylor slowly realised the truth: the man had taken all his belongings and vanished toward another city. Taylor was alone, far from any friend, with almost no money and nothing but the clothes he stood in.

Night fell in the city of Hai-ning, and he could not find anywhere to sleep. He tried inn after inn; some turned him away, others promised him a bed and then, frightened off by an official who kept following him, sent him back into the street. One young man led him around for hours, apparently to help, then abandoned him between one and two in the morning to fend for himself. Exhausted, blistered, and cold, Taylor found himself in front of a closed temple, lay down on the stone steps, and put his small store of money under his head for a pillow.

Then it got worse. A figure came creeping toward him through the dark — one of the many beggars in that region, clearly intending to rob him while he slept. Taylor did not move. He watched, and prayed, and when the man reached out and began quietly feeling for the money, Taylor spoke in a calm voice, just enough to show he was wide awake: “What do you want?” The man slipped away. But he came back, this time with a companion, and later a third, all settling near Taylor’s feet, all clearly waiting for him to fall asleep so they could take everything he had. To stay awake — and to keep them off — Taylor spent the rest of the night singing hymns, reciting Scripture aloud, and praying out loud in English, which annoyed the thieves so much that they eventually gave up and left him just before dawn.

Here is what makes this more than a scary night. On the road afterward, thinking it over, Taylor was struck by his own heart. He had been frantic about losing a few possessions — and far less troubled about the crowds of people around him who did not know Christ. He thought of Jesus, “despised and rejected,” with nowhere to lay his head, weary and hungry at a well, and he measured his own small love against that. He came away not bitter about the robbery but ashamed of how little the eternal things had gripped him compared to his luggage.

That is worth sitting with, because your instincts run the same way as his did. When you lose something — money, a phone, status, a relationship, a plan — the panic is instant and total. It swallows everything. And the things that actually last forever, including the people around you and where they stand with God, barely register by comparison. Taylor did not scold himself for feeling the loss; losing everything on cold stone steps genuinely hurts. He noticed the proportion was off: how loud the small loss was, how quiet the enormous one.

Jesus had nowhere to lay his head — by choice, for you. He gave up infinitely more than a bag of instruments, and he did it on purpose, for people who mostly did not care. When that sinks in, a stolen suitcase shrinks to roughly its real size.

One thing to do the next time you lose something: before you spiral, name honestly how much panic the loss is generating — and then ask yourself when you last felt even a fraction of that intensity about someone’s soul, including your own. You are not trying to stop caring about your stuff. You are trying, like Taylor, to get the proportions right.