Meet John

Up until about a week ago John lived in a gray and yellow tent with his purebred collie, Lacey. After a few weeks of casual observance, they proved to be inseparable. John shared his food with her and made her a bed right next to his own every night. And though she wasn’t a very big dog, though her ribs jutted out just enough to notice, everyone felt protected just having her there.

After his wife passed away, John considered his dog Lacey to be everything to him. No longer did he possess a house or a car or any other belongings. Lacey was the only thing that he had left from his wife.

When I first met John, I asked him how I could pray for him. He was leaning heavily against the oak tree at the back of the lot, his gray eyes scanning the street. Wisps of long gray hair fell in front those eyes, creating a tangible picture of the curtain that he had erected between us. He was slow in answering at first. John wanted what most sought – a job, a house, someplace to call his own.

I probed a little bit further. “What about your heart?” I asked him. “What does your heart need?” He stopped and looked down at the cracked earth before meeting my eyes. “My heart hurts,” he said softly. “My wife is gone, and I’m heartbroken.”

In one form or another, we all understand heartbreak. So standing right in front of his gray and yellow tent with Lacey sitting at John’s feet, we prayed. And as the words came tumbling out, John’s tears came down faster and faster.

In Psalm 147:3 it says that, “He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.” I know that as those tears hit the cracked earth below us, Jesus was working in John’s heart to slowly start to bind up his wounds.

John doesn’t live in that gray and yellow tent anymore. I heard that a little over a week ago, one of John’s relatives pulled up in a red pick-up truck and asked him if he wanted a job and a place to live for a few years while he got back on his feet. Not needing to be asked twice, John packed up his belongings and, together with his dog Lacey, made his first transitional steps toward a new life. When I stopped to think about it, I couldn’t help but wonder if this new chance at life is perhaps another way that God is using to bind up John’s old wounds.

Please pray for John as he starts his new life:
1. That he would surrender to the Lord and know that hope and healing is found only through him.
2. That he’s able to transition smoothly as he moves into a new house and job.
3. That he continues to heal from the heartbreak of losing his wife.

The Irony of Conversation: Meet Rod, Darren, & Bernice

I had a conversation in Detroit on Sunday that has been weighing on my heart ever since. The words collided and then dislodged from one another, dead ends and split sentences, paragraphs, thoughts. The conversation was one that brought to light no solution – except one that a miracle of God might bring about – and only harsh realities. But truth is always worth sharing.

Meet Rod and Darren, two men that sit in the back of the lot under the oak tree. It’s quiet back there except for the music floating out of a boxy radio. Rod looks at you in the eye when you speak to him and smiles off to one side. He gets up every morning and goes to work even though he doesn’t have a permanent address to put on his resume. He likes to speak a “good Word” when he sees me and tells me what God has been doing in his life.

We settled down under the tree and I asked them how their week had been. Right away, Darren asked me how I thought their typical week usually went. They’re homeless. How could I even begin to understand something like that from where I came from?

I want to qualify that his question wasn’t said in a malicious way – it was just really honest. I told him that while I didn’t understand what it meant to be homeless, I wanted to know them and understand their life. That I thought about all of them when it was raining or if it was really hot outside. And in defense to my question, I said that I believed that no matter if we’re homeless or not, we can have a good or a bad week. We make a choice.

Darren told me that he understood this completely; he woke up every morning knowing that he was blessed by God. He told me that he’s just waiting for his disability check to come in so that he could move into an apartment. That our prayers are appreciated and that they enjoy having us come down, but that they help take care of themselves as a community as well. Darren has found jobs for some of the people through his connections. They share their food with each other. They watch out for each other.

Honestly, none of this was really a surprise to me; I’ve witnessed it. It was his next comment that really cut my heart.

Darren told me that a lot of the people he knows are going to be ok. They’re waiting for their checks; they’re waiting for a job to come through; they’re being proactive. But he told me that the sad part of it all are the people who won’t ever get off the street, whether because of addiction or laziness or other circumstances. He said that they’re not choosing to see God’s blessings; they’re not choosing to find a way out.

And I’ve always known it. But it hit me that some of our friends will always be homeless. Some of our friends will always be addicted to drugs. Some of our friends will die, alone and cold. Some of our friends will choose to make bad, destructive decisions, and we are called to love them through it anyway. We are called to invest and love, no matter if someone is receptive to it or not.

Yes, we need to encourage people to make their appointments and get work and get off drugs and love Jesus. But the LOVE JESUS part is the most important. Jesus tells us the poor will always be among us. And my mind has shifted to take this in, even though I’ve “known” this on some level for a long time.

After I talked to Rod and Darren, I went over to see another friend. Meet Bernice. She is a 55 year old woman who’s body is ravaged by health problems. I found out that she wasn’t sitting on the curb the Sunday before because she had been rushed to the hospital for complications with her diabetes. This Sunday she was laying on the pavement, weak and surrounded by dirty pigeons picking at the food around her. She could barely talk or support herself enough to sit up on her elbows. But Bernice is also an addict. She wants to get help; she wants to get off the street, but she can’t kick her habit.

And it hit me that Bernice is one of the people that Darren and Rod told me about. Bernice will never make it off the street, unless by a miracle of God.

I don’t know what to do with this realization. Honestly, it breaks my heart. Please pray for Bernice. Every time I think about her I want to cry. She’s told me in the past that all she wants is dignity. She wants to be hopeful again. I told her that she’s only going to find that hope through Jesus, and I want her eyes to be opened to that.

When it comes down to it, what else do we have to offer? We can hand out Aquafina bottles, but only the Living Water is going to do any long-term good.

Meet Ray

Some time back on one of our explorations through Detroit, we noticed a man hunched over on the steps of an old church, his face buried into his lap. The temperature had dropped below 60 degrees, and the summer air blew harsh against the skin. Rain came down in sheets intermittently. His body was only half covered by the eaves, spindly legs in jogging pants poking out onto the sidewalk.

I’ve thought about this man everyday since I saw him on the steps of that empty church.

A couple nights later we drove past the same church and are pretty sure we saw him again, this time huddled on one of the park benches out front. Finally, after days of thinking about this man, I had learned his name.

Meet Ray. Middle-aged and weary, Ray lives outside the walls of a church because he claims it is one of the safest places he can be. He works hard, walking miles several times a week to put in job applications all over the city. Ray is mild-mannered but friendly, generous and considerate. When he heard that we hadn’t eaten at White Castle before, he pulled out two of his hamburgers and tried to share his dinner with us, not knowing when his next meal would come.

We asked Ray what he would choose to do if he could do anything he wanted. He told us that he enjoyed drawing and would love to do something where he could create cartoon strips. Art moved him. In the practical sense, he told us he’d settle for anything. He just wanted a job so that he could get off the streets.

Glimpsing Ray sitting on the park bench outside the church, his arms crossed over his chest and his head nodding in sleep, we were reminded that one of God’s names is El Roi – God Who Sees. El Roi sees our past heartaches, our present struggles and our anxieties about the future; He knew Ray long before we did and has continued taking care of him after our paths separated.

Pray for Ray this week as you think about him:
1. That he might find continue to find sustenance and protection daily
2. That his diligence may pay off and that he may find a job soon
3. For God to continue providing him hope and for his eyes to be open to it

Meet Donna

Years ago as a pastor’s wife, Donna felt called to begin a ministry at their church for the homeless. She journeyed to Tijuana, taking two suitcases but ending up with only the clothes she traveled in, sure that God had taken her out there to teach her something. She had just never expected to become homeless herself. Today she has two plastic folding chars, a large print bible, a messenger bag and little else. She’s been homeless for a little over two months now and still has faith that God is teaching her something.

Donna and I met outside the shelter before the lunchtime rush. I was standing outside on the street, my feet balanced halfway on the curb, when our eyes connected. She smiled slightly and tilted her head to one side, waving me over.

It was just like any other introduction. We smiled at each other and exchanged pleasantries. I think we may have even shook hands. But Donna was hardly impersonal. Almost immediately she began telling me about her plans for the future. Plans that included writing, nursing school and politics.

Not only is Donna an ambitious dreamer, but she works hard to put these dreams into action. She told me that she writes when the Spirit moves her and isn’t afraid to share the truth burdened on her heart. Her writing is honest and filled with conviction, a voice that is refreshing, meditative and drawn from scripture. Besides writing, she’s put in graduate school applications and is a write-in candidate for an upcoming political election.

More than her ambition, Donna’s heart radiates through her smile and actions. God blessed her with a sweet spirit; she is both mild-mannered and compassionate. At one point in the afternoon she even sacrificed her two chairs so that other women who didn’t have seats could relax for a few hours.

I see Jesus in her soft smile and compassionate actions. I know that others do to.

Please pray for Donna this week as God lays her on your heart:
1. That she gets back regularly into the Word. She’s studying Jonah this week. Pray that God reveal Himself to her through that scripture.
2. That she continue to be a light to those around her.