The Homeless in America
In my previous blog, entitled “Each person’s Life has Meaning and Purpose” I spoke of how society has created inequality in our humanity, but that God sees us all as equal, since we are all His children.
I would like to continue on again with that same general theme with this blog.
My daughter-in-law, Heather, and I were talking on the phone last night, and she related the following event. Here is a little background information… Heather recently opened up an automotive repair shop, and mini-dealership in a blighted area of St Petersburg, Florida. My son’s children and Heather’s step-children, Chloe and Casey, are down spending a few weeks with them. Heather has been taking them over to the shop during the day, and the kids enjoy the action of customers coming in and out of the business. Chloe even thinks she “sold” a car to a customer yesterday morning, so she spent the afternoon on the Internet searching for something to buy with her “commission check.”
The shop was being renovated for the past several months, prior to its grand opening, and during that time; a homeless man started coming around their business. In conversations with the man, they determined that he was living in a storage shed behind an abandoned building across the street from their business. Guarded at first in their interactions with the man, they have come to the realization that he is harmless. Heather lets the man come into the shop during the day to get in out of the hot Florida sun. Yesterday when he was in, he met Chloe and Casey. After he left, little Casey asked where the man lived, and Heather told her that he lived in a shed across the street. Casey thought Heather was teasing her, until Heather walked Casey across the street to show her the man’s “home.” Heather said little Casey’s eyes got really big, and a sadness came over her face. Little Casey came face to face to the reality of poverty for the very first time.
Where I live, the local newspaper has been covering a story regarding on how the county’s executives are trying to deal with the tremendous increase in panhandlers on the streets begging for money. They have been debating how to legislate the situation away.
At the same time this debate has been going on, one of the newspaper’s columnists has been doing feature stories on these panhandlers. In one story he accompanied an apartment owner around as the owner attempted to hire those holding signs saying, “Will work for food”. Of the 5 people saying they wanted a job, only 1 showed up the next day…and that person simply wanted money…but didn’t want to work.
I don’t presume to know why these people came to be where they are. It is not my job to sit in judgment of them…that’s God’s job. Along with little Casey, sadness comes over my face when I see them too. They are the lost and broken among us.
I would suggest to you that they are not the only lost and broken among us…and the lack of money is not the determining factor on whether a person is lost and broken. I would offer up that the Kardashian’s, the Lohan’s of the world, and any number of Housewives of (You Pick the City) are every bit as lost.
My dad had a saying…my dad always had a saying…anyway, it went something like this, “It’s not what you make; it’s what you do with it after you get it that counts.” Based on my lower middle class upbringing…my dad wasn’t speaking of a stock portfolio…he was just talking about not spending more than you made, or spending it foolishly. However, I think you can expand the meaning of his saying to include spending lavishly on weddings, diamond rings, cars, estates, and any other sort of extreme extravagance while others suffer.
For everyone of the poor examples listed above; where, for reasons known only to God, have hit life’s lottery, and have more money than they know what to do with…there are those who are quietly going about providing safe drinking water in Africa, educating the poor, ridding the world of polio and a host of other deadly diseases, providing affordable AID’s medicine, putting smiles on faces of children born with a cleft pallet.
There are the lost and the broken among us…but God also has blessed us with many of His angels as well. I guess the question then becomes…which one are we?
I think the following passage from Matthew 16:25 sort of sums up what I’ve been attempting to say… “For whoever wants to save his life lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. For what does it benefit a person, if he gains the whole world but forfeits his life? Or what can a person give in exchange for his life? For the Son of Man will come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will reward each person according to what he has done.
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