Previous Challenge Entry (Level 2 – Intermediate)
Topic: ARTIFICIAL (08/11/16)
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TITLE: Smoky Years and Falling Tears | Previous Challenge Entry
By Sara Daigle
08/15/16 -
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I want to get to know these people, really know them and be their friend. But I drive by because I hear they often spend cash on cigarettes and drugs more than food.
Someone even told me once, someone who had lived the streets and taken the meth and stolen the car, that most of these people don't need to be there. They are living the results of their own lack of discipline.
But it haunts me. Who are they, and why are they there? And didn't Jesus come for me when I was living the results of my own chosen sin? Didn't He come right down, not just to sit with me, but to live with me?
Today, I decided to bring desire into reality and go see these people. Join my friends who dish out food on hot Sunday afternoons, who walk where they walk, who reach out hands to ladle substance onto plates in hopes that love will reach far past the food right into the heart.
I pass by well-suited men surrounded by ladies in skirts walking out of lovely buildings, and my heart aches. It all seems artificial in light of Who Jesus was, how He had no where to lay His head, how He sat with sinners.
Why do we ignore the hurting, the smoke-laden atmospheres, while following hundreds of outward patterns of religion?
Is our religion even real at all, if we don't do what He did?
I go sit across from her, the girl in black with haunted eyes. She moans in pain of body, then verbalizes her pain of soul. She speaks of killing, of wondering which sequence is worse-- homicide then suicide, or suicide then homicide. I listen, then mention gently that neither are good options, and the heart who does either has forgotten that each soul has purpose here on earth.
She moans again. Her bladder is infected and her purse has been stolen, she has no charger for her phone, and her husband (who looks 30 years older than she) has had his life threatened.
The kids I brought, the ones growing quickly toward teen years, sweep rounds across the floor and listen, ears perked. I know they are learning more here, right here in this place, than they will in ten Bible lessons at home in that clean living room with windows facing the water.
All is peace there; all is not peace everywhere in the world, and they need to see it, need to sweep that floor, need to carry melon to the table for more hungry bodies. They need to know first hand how blessed their lives are, and how much Christ needs them to be His hands and feet.
I bend low and hand over some money for the medication she needs for her infection. I warn her, low and quiet, that she must use it for meds and gas rather than drugs. She nods.
We pull away into sunlight, WalMart, crafts, and projects. It all seems trite, meaningless in light of the feast my heart just experienced. I got to sit with them instead of drive by them. It was like coming home, and tears spilled the eyes as I realized my heart felt more satiated, satisfied, after sitting in that hot, smoky room than it does when I'm focusing on pleasure and things.
I can't believe how we run about life as if our resources were the end of all things. How we ignore the deep and replace it with the surface, all in the name of One Who didn't have a place to call home, but made it His greatest prerogative to seek out, love out, save out, the wounded.
As Cody Joshua says, “Remember, do not confuse the means with the end. As faithful stewards, we are to use these resources to fulfill our purpose. The resources themselves were never meant to become our purpose.”
Let's trade in our dissatisfied, living-for-the-surface type of life for one drenched in things vital to Christ, eternity, and love. Friends, let's be real in our quest for God and not be content until we live as He lived and walk as He walked, until we sit with them, catch their tears, spoon food onto plates and love into hearts.
Let's not play church, let's live Christ.
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Now, only Jesus can give hope where there is no hope. But how do we do that? I guess we help their physical needs and share the gospel with them.
Some hearts will be caught up in Christ, while others, for the life of them, are unable to catch the vision.
Keep on writing.
My heart breaks for the wounded in our society. It is a complex problem because some use the money for alcohol and drugs and others for food for themselves and their children. Many of the homeless in our local mission are children.
Many of the police and sheriffs in our town hand out $5.00 gift cards for Subway, McDonald, Burger King, and others.
I liked the last line as it summed it up very nicely.
Congratulations!