About two years ago I was sitting and talking with a man in our shelter. I asked him where he was at with God and he patted his chest with his palm and said, "I have Jesus in my heart." The first thought that entered my mind was, "And who am I to say otherwise?' Even though his life bore no resemblance whatsoever to that of a "Christian", I had no more basis on which to question his salvation or his walk with the Lord than I do for anyone else - at least, not based on his lifestyle. Things are not always what they seem.

I can remember, at the age of 19, hitch-hiking from Nova Scotia to Ontario. On this particular trip, almost every ride was from a Christian. Some tried to evangelize me, some rode in peaceable silence, some talked. I'd been home a couple of days and went to a party at a friend's h0use. Another guest and I were talking and I mentioned the obvious preponderance of born-again believers on this trip and said, "I think God is trying to tell me something." I had no interest in following the Lord at all, but there he was, talking with me, all along the highway.

Tonight I had a conversation over dinner with a heroin addict. He's been an addict for over 30 years. He isn't going to get clean - it's that simple. He was stoned tonight when we talked - he's at a point in living with his addiction where he subsists on only enough to stop him from feeling sick, from having the fear come back. He mentioned that he lives with fear, and only wants peace. I prayed for him and simply asked that God would make his love real, that God would make him to know how treasured and loved he is. He lifted his head and with a stunned look on his face said that he had been praying for the very same thing before he came in tonight. That's when it dawned on me - the  heroin addict I was talking with is a child of God.

I've talked and prayed with drug addicts and alcoholics and homeless men. I've had conversations with men about God who wore prison tattoos and realized that there was no way I wanted to know what their crime was. I've heard their stories, heard them talk with great respect for the Lord, heard them share spiritual truths so profound as to leave me breathless and stunned. I can't explain it, don't have the theology for it, don't have anything to say except that I now understand this one thing - this one, simple truth that tonight has changed everything - this too is the body of Christ.

Drug addicts and drunks, dope smoking mamas whose children have been taken from them, ex-cons, filthy homeless men, single moms who are pregnant again - we are the body. And we are starving, and we are dying, and we are walking the streets at night and, before we go to the shelter for a free dinner, we are praying and asking God to love us, and to let us know we are loved. 30 years of heroin and he doesn't want to be cured, he doesn't want his enlarged liver healed, he doesn't want to have a life and a home and car and an ipod and a flat screen tv. All he wants is to know that God loves him back, and it's all I can do to keep the tears from my eyes.

We are the body.