Yesterday I was sitting in my room doing my homework and I was overcome with this conviction. Here I was sitting there doing homework and listening to "good, Christian" music. Frequently I have good conversations about how the Church needs to step up and do something about the poor and marginalized. I tell people that I love Jesus and want to give my life to serve Him and serve His children.
But this crazy conviction came over me last night.
The Spirit opened my mind and heart to the fact that I might say that I love Jesus and I might go on spontaneous mission trips. Those are great things. But how can I say I love Christ when I sit on my butt everyday and live selfishly. How can I say I love Jesus when I neglect to "feed the poor and clothe the homeless."? I don't do a good job at living out what I preach. sad, but true.
After this revelation I began thinking that the church may or may not make loving on the homeless more complicated than it actually is or has to be.
At Cornerstone we have something called Grab n' Go. You fill out a slip of paper and grab your food. It's real simple. Real easy.
And then it hit me! What if I got grab n' go and brought it to a homeless person. What if I ate lunch with a homeless person? What would happen?
So, this afternoon my friend and I took a bus downtown. We prayed over this and asked the Lord to lead us. What actually transpired is nothing dramatic. It wasn't crazy. It was simple.
We brought three grab n' go's. One for my friend. One for the person we would minister too, and one for me. We had this image of us having lunch with someone and chatting with them. I love this, because it doesn't have "charity" written all over it. It's like Hey! We want to get to know you and listen to you, because we love you.
Instead, we walked to Veteran's Park. As we were walking a homeless man came up and told us that we looked like nice young ladies and would we by any chance have money. He also had two friends with him. We were like we don't have money, but we have food! So we gave it away. Yep, a simple thing, right? No drama or hype or anything. We just wanted to love someone and bless them. I hope we did. It really wasn't about us...at all. It's Jesus. I hope the nice old man saw Christ and not us. I hope he felt cared for and loved.
We keep walking and we are like okay, what now? We keep walking through Veteran's Park and come across a man on a bench. His name was Jim. He had lovely blue eyes. If you looked in them long enough, it was as if you were swimming in the ocean. He looked sad. I look at him and I say hi and he says hi back. we talk for about ten minutes. Random things. Nothing deep. I really hope he felt loved too. I really hope he felt listened too.
And then we got lost, and go on the wrong bus, but that is beside the point.
I know I've said this before, but I'm going to say it again. You don't have to read farther. It's really okay.
Every time I get on a bus or walk among the homeless people my heart melts. I have this crazy love for them. It's like, hey! I can relate with you. I might not be physically poor (this is debatable, seeing as I have about $54 dollars), but I know how it is to have a poverty of the soul and to feel pain and to be lonely.
All of the presuppositions fade and I become one of them.
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