Today my friend James took me up on the hill to show me where he and a couple other guys are camped out. The whole time I visited with him I was trying to imagine myself living there in those tents. There is a grouping of three tents around a small fire pit. The snow from last week is starting to melt, but it's still all around. They don't seem to mind too much, but I'm not sure I could have the same attitude about the conditions. One of James' campmates was up there trying to get a drink of water from a gallon jug but the water was frozen solid, so he couldn't get any. He was shivering uncontrollably and he said when he'd gotten up this morning his shoes were frozen to the floor of his tent.
Say all you want about homeless people and why you think they are homeless or what you think they should do about changing their situation, but I realized today that those things don't matter much when it comes to the reality that my friends are up on the hill tonight trying to sleep in a tent and the temperature is declining quickly from 11 degrees. What they really need right now is a blanket--maybe a hatchet to cut some wood, or a jug that won't freeze solid every night.
In some ways, this reminds me of churches and doctrine. We can spend a lot of time and read volumes of books about doctrine--what we believe about God and how we interpret his word, whether we capitalize the word Word, and so on. The bottom line, however, is that while we try and get our doctrine straight, people are dying because they simply don't have real love. They have no Christ-following friends who love them with God's love and therefore are dying for lack of it. Maybe I'll never be a great pastor becasue I don't have a very complicated or well-defined doctrine, but I hope God holds me in the strictest of accountability if I fail to notice the people around me starving for God's pure love while I try and control and uphold a belief system based on things peripheral or irrelevant to that love.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
6 comments:
What was your personal response to their situation? Did you offer to give them another blanket and if so how did they respond? Also, do they enjoy leaving in the open or would they rather be inside if they could? I know the answer seems obvious but I'm curious to know if the obvious answer is the right answer.
I've actually been spending a lot of time with these particular guys, so it seems like I'm able to ask a ton of questions and stuff and it doesn't throw them off too much. They say they are warm enough when they are sleeping--both of them have mattresses and multiple sleeping bags/blankets.
One of the things I'm trying to accomplish is figuring out what they really do need. I can see now that a hatchet would be useful and I've already given one of them a pair of waterproof shoes I had. I'm working on a way to hang a tea pot over their fire to be able to warm water as well as homemade fire-starters so they don't have to waste their cooking fuel starting fires.
These two guys say they prefer to live outside, but I don't think they would turn down a free place to live.
I'm betting that it is not real hard for you to love these guys because they have obvious needs. True? Who is it in Durango that you find really hard to love?
I'd say you love with those in front of you, those that intersect your path. I mean, we can say, "Hey, let's find the REAL lepers", but you have to build up to that. You have to train up to it.
I know that sounds a little strange. But these are people here with needs.
Who do I love? Those who are similar to me who don't challenge me or have evident needs. Go me.
Honestly, its not hard to love these guys because I can relate to them easily. The guys I'm talking about are people who happen to be homeless, but we have things in common like a love of cars, foosball, sense of humor, etc.
None of this is as noble as it sounds, really...I've made friends with some guys who happen to be homeless. The lesson, I believe, is that loving people is being willing to look past their superficial groupings and categories to see the potential for friendship. I'm not friends with all the homeless in Durango (there's actually one guy who still runs away from me when I try and talk to him), but I've found a few guys who I can relate to.
I've become convinced of two things through this experience...one thing is that I'm not going to be friends with everyone. The second is that no matter what group or category of people I find around me, there is most likely someone in that group who I have the potential for authentic friendship with--the only barrier is my willingness to look beyond the categories to who they are and what we have in common.
I think the hard part is looking past the superficiality of the situation, like you said. When you stop viewing them as "the homeless," and seeing them as people who you just might have something in common with, loving them becomes easy.
The difficult thing is looking past the superficiality. Or maybe we're just afraid to look past the superficial stuff, because if we did, we'd see how easy it really is to relate to people. Keeping things superficial by categorizing them means we don't have to complicate our lives by making them "real people." Because if they were "real," and not just a "category," we'd feel the need to do something.
Looks like you're doing awesome things! Keep up the good work!
Post a Comment