Take Me to the River
August 10, 2007 Had a coffee with one of our dinner guests tonight. He used to live down by the river. He now rents a room. He was talking about the difference this had made in his life, about how difficult his life had been when it rained for three days straight, about the security guard chasing him out of the city bus terminal at 6 AM while he was trying to warm up. "This is a public place", he protested, to which the guard replied, "Not for you guys."
I remember those rainy days well. He came to me one night and said there was two other guys in his campsite and could he take them some meals? I packed him three meals - one for the two "guests" and one for him. I made the meals generous, as I was thinking that if this guy was feeding other homeless folks... well, why wouldn't I be generous? Tonight I learned that generosity is a coin of the realm in God's Kingdom - there were five guys there when he got back to the campsite and he had enough food to feed them all. I had no idea.
I asked him what he learned through those dark days and he replied, "You can survive. You can do anything, you can survive anything." He then told me about the places where he found food, and shelter, about why you shouldn't drink mouth wash, told me where his pan-handling spot was. I then asked him what he had learned about himself and he said, "With God's help you can do anything - you just have to know that sometimes you need help."
When I was a teenager I worked as a dishwasher at a hotel and banquet centre. I was struggling to carrying a long, heavy banquet table through the kitchen, trying to make my way through the many twists and turns in the kitchen. The table was too big, too awkward and far too heavy for me and Chef Heinz asked one of the other staff to give me a hand with it. I was amazed at how easily the two of us were able to take the table to its place and set it up. Our combined effort was far greater than either of us working alone. Most of our lives are spent like that, n0t knowing how much we struggle to get through our day, needing God to send us someone to help carry the load. I have to confess, though, that I haven't always had the humility and the wisdom to the accept the help. Sadly, most of us don't. We don't spend too many rainy nights on the river bank, we don't have to walk across town to get out of the rain for a couple of hours and get something to eat. I'm not saying that's a good thing or a bad thing, I just wonder if we really understand what it means to need one another.
Because I'm not sure I would have cared about feeding those other guys.
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Reader Comments (11)
I was mesmerized - I realized that these kids had found themselves a family - a community in the true sense.
It's what the human heart craves - and we will look for it 'til we find it - regardless of the cost - and sometimes it costs a lot.
http://annafirtree.livejournal.com/68841.html
I might have posted it here, but I'm not confident enough that it's fully relevant.
you can't tell me for a minute if you knew there were five homeless folks in need of a meal you wouldn't have packed enough for all of them, that you wouldn't have cared.
what a testimony of faith he exhibited, though - that God provides.
Found you via Heather at Deconstructed Christian. I am enjoying your posts. Thank you!
Anna - Thanks!
Wilsonian - Purely accidental on my part, I'm afraid.
Barbara - Thanks for that!
Amber - How very true.
Joanee & ~m2~ - You are a 'disagreeble' pair, aren't you? What I'm sayin' is that if I had been sleeping in the rain down by the river...
faintnot - Yup. I am constantly amazed at how I am the one being ministered to...