Homeless Tonight

"Where will Gil sleep tonight??"

This question haunted me, evoking many tears on a chilly car ride Friday night. I was driving home from meeting Matt for dinner on his break. When we had sat down to eat in the food court, a grizzled, homeless man had walked in, set his Save-a-Lot bags down, and sunk wearily into a chair at the table next to ours.

Our encounter with this man came as yet another one of those "sacred echoes" (Margaret Feinberg, Sacred Echoes) of God whispering to me and molding my heart toward consumption and toward the poor lately. Here are a few of these echoes I have been encountering:

1) A class I am taking right now that has required the completion of a several part project on the book of Amos--a book basically about the condemnation of God's people because of their oppression of the poor

2) A retreat a few weeks ago where I was challenged to live more in a pattern of rhythm and investment rather than purchase and consumption

3) A holiday season where I haven't been sure how bills are going to be paid, but we seem to keep spending anyway

So when this homeless man sat down near our table on Friday, we couldn't just look the other way as we so often do. We knew deep in our souls that it was not okay that this man was hungry and cold and that it was not okay for us to ignore him when we have so much, so we asked him if he would like some dinner. We were able to sit and eat with him, to learn his name was Gil, and hear some of his story.

When dinner was over, we said our good byes, and I drove home sheltered on the outside from the bitter elements but completely torn up on the inside by the question of how Gil would stay warm on this same night.

Now, I know that we all respond at this point with questions about empowering versus enabling and that we justify the fact that this problem exists by saying we can only do so much, but there is something terribly wrong here my friends.

There should not be Gils in this world sleeping in the cold.

We are the ones commissioned to do something about it by a God who has told us again and again not only that the poor and oppressed are those who are closest to his heart but also that those who allow oppression to continue will sit under his deepest, just wrath.

What can we do to make this right in our world? In Lancaster? What will we do today? Tomorrow? What will we put off for later and eventually relegate to never?

We have a God who has painted a beautiful picture of the restoration of all things in Christ to what they were intended to be, and we have opportunity, the responsibility to join in this process, to bring hope to our world again.

So I pray that we will be a people of action. That we will continue to be shaken from the individualistic, selfish worlds that we so easily dwell in, and that we will become the agents of restoration in our world. That we will be a people that co-create with God a world where no Gils will sleep in the cold tonight. In the name of Christ, may it be.