Tell John the Baptist, “The down and out have turned into the up and coming . . .”

Matthew 11:2-6:

Now when John heard in prison about the deeds of the Christ, he sent word by his disciples and said to him, “Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?” And Jesus answered them, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them. And blessed is the one who is not offended by me.”

And, a paraphrase of this passage in The Jesus I Never Knew:

You go tell John what you’ve seen around here.  Tell him there are people who have sold their seeing-eye dogs and taken up bird-watching.  Tell him there are people who’ve traded in aluminum walkers for hiking boots.  Tell him the down-and-out have turned into the up-and-coming and a lot of dead-beats are living it up for the first time in their lives (Yancey, The Jesus I Never Knew, 93)."