Homeless Heartbreak

signMany years ago, when I was married to my first husband and we had a baby, he worked in a recycling center in front of a grocery store. Many of his clients were homeless people who came to recycle the cans and bottles they collected from garbage. I began to have a new perspective on the homeless during this time. I saw that the homeless who came to his center were drunk and used the money to buy more alcohol. I heard stories of homeless people refusing to eat because they wanted to spend their money on alcohol. I started to look down on homeless people. I had reached hard times before. I knew what it was like to have very little money, to survive paycheck to paycheck, and to have serious depression and other emotional issues. I had always had to pick myself and get through it all. It was just the way life was.

So I began to have an attitude that the homeless should do the same thing. Why should I give them my hard-earned money so they could waste it on alcohol or drugs? The alcohol and drugs were what was keeping them on the streets. They were making a choice to live that kind of life. Even if they were homeless vets, there are programs for them where they could get help. There are always ways to get help, I thought. Enough excuses, I thought. I was actually angry and disgusted with the homeless.

That was about 16 years ago. That was before Jesus touched my heart and gave me a whole new perspective on the homeless. It is hard to have disdain for other people and love Jesus. It is difficult to not feel compassion and love towards others, when you have given your heart to Jesus. Even as a new Christian I balked at a friend who gave a woman begging on a street corner food. She didn’t look hard up. She had pretty nice clothes on. How bad off could she be? How wrong I was, friends.

Whoever is generous to the poor lends to the Lord, and he will repay him for his deed. Proverbs 19:17

I know I am not the only person who has looked down on the homeless. It is so very easy to judge others, and I find myself doing it often. It is a very bad habit I have, and I pray constantly to lose it. Yet Jesus has transformed me when it comes to looking down on the homeless. I have had some very precious interactions with men and women who have been on a street corner with a hand out for help. Because that is exactly what they are looking for – some help. God sees these poor souls. They are His precious children, just as much as I am. He loves them and yearns to see their suffering end. Because let’s be real – they are truly suffering souls.

I have been so touched with a new love for the homeless that I now keep $5 bills and $5 McDonalds gift certificates in my purse. If my husband and I see a homeless person we can get to, we go to them and talk with them and pray for them and give them the money or gift card. I have absolutely had my heart touched by these people. And I have seen what a stranger stopping to talk to them has affected them. They are the hated, the invisible, the disgusting. People yell out their windows at them and tell them to get a job. How can we judge, when we have no idea what their story is?

Give justice to the weak and the fatherless; maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute. Psalm 82:3

homelessThe other night we were driving to get ice cream and saw a young man on a very busy street corner. I felt so-called to stop and talk to this man. We gave him the last gift card I had, and because of his position in the street, there was not more we could do. Yet I knew God wanted us to do more. I felt distraught as we went to the ice cream place. I knew the Spirit was moving me to do more than I had. And what really touched me was one word on his sign. “Lonely”. It just broke my heart for this poor lost soul.

I think we have all been in that place at least once in our lives. A place of desperation, loneliness, pain. We just want someone to acknowledge us. To see our suffering and care. We were not meant to be alone, nor to have to do this life alone. God made us to live life in community. Helping each other, caring for each other. It is not natural or right to be so alone and so desperate that we have to be relegated to begging on a busy street corner.

Jesus has a heart for the broken-hearted, the sick, the suffering.  Many times throughout the Gospels we read how Jesus, the disciples, or the apostles heals beggars. El-roi – the God Who Sees Me. That is our God. He sees our suffering and pain and He longs to heal it. To hold us in His mighty right hand and lift us up out of the mire. To be our Rock and Redeemer. El-roi. And He is calling us out to do His work for Him. To go to the invisible homeless on the streets and tell them Jesus Sees You. He knows you. He is here with you.

The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me, because the LORD has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners. Isaiah 61:6

Back to the young homeless man. I told my husband I was convinced the Spirit was leading us to go back to speak with him. He agreed and on the way home we saw him at the same intersection. My husband pulled over into a gas station and walked to the corner of the street. He waved over to the man who was on the little cement strip in the middle of the lanes of traffic. The young man came over and we told him we wanted to give him a little more than we gave him before and asked if we could pray. Before we prayed I asked him what brought him out to the streets. He told us his story of how he ended up homeless, and it was indeed a tale fraught with troubles and mistakes.

Jesus-Healing-beggerThis young man was desperate for a second chance in life. Yet at every turn he was denied one. He longed to make a life for himself, to have a job and a place to live. How does one go to a job interview in dirty clothes? How does a person fill out an application with no address? And what do you do when your past won’t stop haunting you, bringing judgement from prospective employers? As we prayed for him, there on the street corner of a busy intersection, a woman walked by praising the name of Jesus. El-roi.

A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. John 13:34

The young man was wiping away tears in his eyes as we closed the prayer. No one had given him the time of day before. Invisible. No one was willing to care or give him a chance or help him other than maybe giving him some money. “Jesus sees you”, I told him. We touched that mans heart that night. It may not have taken him off the streets or given him a job, but it gave him something else very important. Hope. If you are lost, but you have hope, you have a treasure that no man can steal. I am praying for that young man and I believe in my God, that He is going to do something amazing for him. Because Jesus us the God that works miracles and I believe in His promises. He is the God That Sees Me, and you; each one of us. Thank you Jesus.

Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to your name give glory, for the sake of your steadfast love and your faithfulness! Psalm 115:1

 

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