Thursday, July 23, 2009

Friendship

Today we had many more people than expected and ran out of food...so we ended up taking 2 friends I'll call Steve and Tom out to breakfast.
Here's a paraphrase from Tom, a struggling carpenter who has been without a place to call home for 2 months:
"No one has ever done this for me before, I mean taken us out to eat". "Really?" "Yeah, people look down on us, like we're lower than them. I guess no one wants to get to know us...I never imagined I'd ever be in this situation".

If I didn't have the loving family that I have, I could be in the same situation. Steve and Tom told us about their families. Both come from violent families, and no one gets along.
Are those who are without a home really lower than those who have a shelter to stay in? Are they lazy? Unwilling to work? No, this is not the case and they are just as human as you and me. What they lack is friendship. I once watched a video, that I wish I could track down again, but basically the plot was this:
A man walks around a city asking random people to define poverty. Most say its a lack of money, a job, maybe a place to live. Then he asks how long it would take them to find food if they were suddenly out of a job, money and a home. The answer was around 30 minutes. Then he asked, how long would it take you to find shelter? Most answered, several hours. How long would it take you to find a job? A few weeks. Ultimately, what the poorest of the poor are lacking isn't a place to stay and a place to eat, it's someone to offer them a room and someone to invite them over for dinner, it's friendship. They are lacking friendship.

My heart aches for Steve and Tom. They are not below me, not any different from me. What they lack is friendship.

2 comments:

  1. exactly.
    you have a beautiful heart erin. : )

    and I love how this morning on the way to the green I was really aching inside to be able to talk to people and hear their stories, I got a bit discouraged as we ran out of food, and no one had sat down, or really stayed long to chat with us........(they do some days)
    turns out that running out of food provided that opportunity.
    How upside-down God tends to turn things.
    ...or maybe we just don't see right-side up.

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  2. ha ha yeah, probably more that we don't see things right-side up

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