In the gospel this week Jesus is confronted by a leper who was asking to be healed. To be a leper in 1st Century Palestine was to be utterly rejected from society, regarded as an outcast. They were not permitted to engage in religious practice as they were permanently regarded as being ritually unclean and, indeed, unable to become clean as long as their disease lasted. Jesus simply stretched out his hand, touched him and made him clean. Jesus saw the man, not the disease! 

How do we apply that to the 21st century? We can ask the question, Who is your leper? Who is the person in your life that you need to embrace rather than reject? Sometimes we are too quick to judge someone based on what we have heard or how they look. Who would benefit from you viewing them with different eyes? Soft eyes! Eyes of compassion!