recently, i think that God has been placing people in my life for a reason. as i noted in previous posts, i took a course called the gospel of luke as a module course here at seminary. in that class two of the biggest subjects we dealt with were the hospitality of God and liberation for the poor. well, low and behold a few situations have occurred in the past several days that have dealt exactly with this.
last weekend, my sister and i had just finished grocery shopping when a lady motioned at us and came walking up. then she began her story. generally i just start to tune them out when that story starts and look for some change to give to them. but thankfully, my sister helped me not to do that. the lady's name was rochelle. she worked on the side of town where we were shopping, but lived with her young children at least twenty minutes away. she and they were hungry and cold and she didn't have a way to get back to them. we offered to take her to the bus depot, and she didn't want us to bother. but she did want us to pray. there in front of aldi's we prayed with her.
then tonight after a week of reading more into the gospel of luke, where just this morning i read about the good samaritan, about helping to usher in the kingdom of God, about asking God for our daily bread; libby and i encountered another similar situation. a gentlemen named terrance came up to us in westport, kansas city and told us of his young girls who needed diapers and nutritional milk. again, i longed just to end the conversation with me sticking my hand in my pocket and taking out some coins i got at the tip jar as a barista today, but thankfully yet again my sister continued in dialogue with the man. we went down to the local grocery story and got him what he had asked. he didn't come in with us, because he said he was already caught stealing some diapers earlier. this man had said that he had come to kansas city in hopes of a fresh start. he'd been a druggie in chi town, and wanted to take proper care of his wife, azetta and his girls.
it's times like these that we're faced with decisions. we can either just say, sorry i've got to go, or look to the scapegoat of some loose change. or, we can physically try to help these people. sure, there are cons out there. maybe even these people were cons. but we cannot be the judges of that. we're called to be the hands and feet of Jesus to the least of these. it's something that takes courage. it takes courage to take that step of getting out of our comfort zones and helping strangers.
yet, i also know there's so much more that can be done. i hope that i can find some meaningful ways, and i hope that the church can find some meaningful ways to help the rochelle's, terrance's, and azetta's which are all over our cities, our world.
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