Where do I start, in talking about yesterday's trip. It was relatively uneventful, Monday trips usually are. However, there was a powerful lesson learned and the thought from the quote above certainly came to my mind after one of the encounters. Both the lesson and the encounter happened shortly after I arrived yesterday, so I'll begin there. I have learned in the course of making these trips that a certain amount of prayer is necessary before I go. I hesitate to label a specific amount of time that's necessary, but preparing my heart before going and asking for God's guidance, presence and providence in bringing about the 'right' people and encounters has become part of the preparation for each trip as much as gathering the food and clothing items and getting them into the car. Yesterday, I wasn't quite ready when I arrived so I wanted to go to the Lincoln Park area because I knew I could sit quietly in my car uninterrupted. As I got off the freeway at Main St and the I-5 I saw three homeless people behind a corner market. I wasn't sure I knew them, although one of them was a woman and I might have helped her before. Across the street from these people was another man, Kenny, who I definitely have helped before standing with his shopping cart in the parking lot waiting for benevolent people to help him. Although I wasn't quite ready to start helping people (remember I wanted to go pray first) I filed the location of these folks in my mind and thought if they are still there on my way back through I'll stop and help them. Then I started thinking about how these folks are always there and I began thinking somewhat critically about how they weren't even trying to 'improve their lot'. Here it was about 11:00 a.m. and they were just standing around not doing anything (like recycling). Now since I have total discretion over who I help I thought maybe these folks don't 'deserve' help today. That's when I started getting 'the lesson'. It seems as though everytime I start thinking critically about these people that I work with I am hit with the thoughts of my own sins and weaknesses. Am I somehow more 'deserving' of God's mercy and forgiveness than these people? Of course, the answer always comes back with a resounding "No". All of us, including me, have sins and weaknesses that we have struggled with all our lives. The old sin nature will plague us until the day we die. The difference between God's lofty Holy and perfect status and us is so vast that the differences between my sin and these homeless peoples' sin is inconsequential. Jesus had to die for all of us. Then part 2 of the lesson hit. Peter's question to Jesus about how many times must we forgive others. Peter thought seven times must surely be enough, yet Jesus said we must forgive seven times seventy! In other words, endlessly, because that's how many times God forgives us over the same sins and weaknesses. If we are to be Christ-like, we must be prepared to do the same for others. Do we really believe God's grace, mercy and forgiveness is endless....endless enough to forgive us of our weaknesses? If we believe it enough to proclaim it to others, then we must believe it for ourselves and begin to show that same grace and mercy to others, whether we think they deserve it or not. So I parked the car by the park and started asking God for a pure heart. "Lord, please give me your heart for the lost, because the one I have is like a cold stone." When I drove back through there, Kenny was still in the same place. He thanked me profusely for stopping and helping him. The other three across the street weren't there (maybe they were recycling now after taking a break), but there was a woman across Daley St. At first she was behind a chain-link fence and 3 other women who were standing at the bus stop were looking at her. I drove around a couple of blocks and backtracked to where she was. When I came back there she was crouched down under the freeway overpass. I wasn't quite sure why she was in this position, but when I called out to her and asked if she needed some food she quickly came over to the car. Her name was Yolanda. After taking the bag of food she started walking back to the concrete wall under the freeway. I couldn't stay stopped there (a bus was coming) so I pulled on down the street. It was as I was pulling away that I figured out what she was doing. Under the freeway and positioned along the wall of the freeway are several pipe openings. They are drainage pipes. She was filling up an empty plastic soda bottle with run-off water from a drainage pipe. I was horrified. I quickly backtracked and drove back to her. I had a gallon jug of drinking water---real drinking water. You can imagine how happy she was to receive it. That's when the quote above came to my mind. I'm really not too excited about Monday trips because the encounters are so brief you end up just handing out food and water. My personal disappointment was that I didn't get to pray with anyone on this trip. Yet, giving this woman some clean water was as important as anything else I could have done yesterday. Luckily, God answered my prayer to guide me and to providentially 'set up' this encounter. It only takes a couple of minutes at most to fill up a soda bottle with water from that pipe. Yet I was there at the exact time she was doing it. God rules and overrules. Praise Him for that.
I did see Willie yesterday. He was one of the men at the barbecue a while back. Everyone living in that alley has since had to move because its gotten so dangerous there. He told me where Tara Lee spends the nights. They both have had to move around quite a bit and they can't hang-out during the day where they've been staying at night. They are both spending the nights at different locations. There is still no one living in Cloud Nine Alley and Skid Row was pretty hostile yesterday too.
There was an encounter last week that I didn't talk about. I didn't get the man's name, but I saw him (see photo) sleeping in this corner. He had nothing but the clothes on his back. As I got out of the car I put some extra food in the food bag I wanted to give him. Yet when I walked up to him and asked if he could use some
food, he angrily got up and walked away. He didn't speak English, but I'm sure he understood that I had a bag of food available for him. I wondered how many times we are like this man. How many times have we missed God's blessing because we were too busy to stop and take notice of His presence. Well, just wondering. --Until next week. John
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