Just the other day...

Just the other day I hugged a homeless person. He was thanking me for the 2-night hotel stay and the meal I brought him and his son and the WalMart gift card I handed him so he could buy more food - or maybe toothpaste, or a Milky Way bar, or a magazine for his adult son with cerebral palsy. Stooped over in pain, leaning heavily on his silver aluminum cane, recently released from the hospital, sweat pouring down his face - I encouraged him to get back to the hospital. He had no way to get there, was worried about paying the ambulance bill, couldn't leave his son, didn't want to leave the hotel room that was provided him. And so he decided he would wait; decided he would figure something out; decided it would all work out alright. He told me he believed in God - really he did - just that life right now was so that he couldn't get to church. He told me that he slept with his Bible under his pillow. He thanked me again for helping and apologized again for being any trouble...he was even thoughtful enough to tell me he liked the sandals I was wearing. Seeing how he was so bent over in pain and embarrassed at his circumstances so that he only occasionally looked me in the eye - instead and mostly looking down at the floor - I guess my sandals were about all that was in his line of vision for the majority of the 20 minutes I stood at his hotel door and talked with him. I don't know how 'Mike' and his son will manage once the hotel room is no longer paid for by the church. When I asked him what he was going to do he answered, "I guess we'll just pack up and go outside, my son can't walk very far. But," he said, "I can't let that happen, somehow I've got to get back on my feet, somehow I've got to be here for my boy, somehow it's all gonna work out." Mike is not the first, nor will he be the last of the homeless who call this church and thousands of other churches across the country for help. Pastors and the churches they serve sometimes get 'taken' for a few bucks by the ones who know how to work the system. For that I say, we give in good faith; we give because that's what Jesus wanted us to do; we give because we have a little bit extra to share; we give never expecting the homeless or the transient to show up at church next Sunday all shiny and clean and ready to join up; we do it because human suffering is difficult to bear; we do it because human being to human being it's the right thing to do; we do it because what we do to the least of these, we do to Christ. Sometimes I worry because circumstances have handed me more than a few bills - more than a few that my paycheck won't quite cover. Sometimes I get jealous because I know a lot of people who have managed better than me; been luckier than me; been less stupid than me. Sometimes I get filled with regret for wasted words and days and years. Sometimes I get sorry for the mistakes and the errors in judgment I have made along the way. And then there are sometimes when I am filled with joy at the sound of birds and the running of a chipmunk and the smell of the freshly mowed grass. Sometimes I am so grateful for my great parents, my great kid, my run of good health, a few good friends, a few good vacations. Sometimes when I am in the church I serve, or sitting in the pews of another sanctuary being fed by hymns and choirs and this thing called community - at those times there is this bubbling up inside of me of something that feels like contentment. And I wonder then about them: the man who sleeps in the weeds close to the interstate, the family who lives in their car down by the river, the mom who works 2 jobs but still can't put together enough for a rental deposit, and...Mike and his son whose name I don't know. When it was time for me to get back home Mike asked for a hug - which I gladly gave him - and as I walked down the hall toward the exit, he yelled out, "Thank you. God Bless You." Like I said, just the other day I hugged a homeless person.