"Someday"

With every passing day I am feeling more and more wrecked for the mission of God. What does it mean to extend a cup of water in Jesus' name? What does it look like to feed a hungry person? How do I invite a stranger in and clothe them? How can I look after the sick and the troubled? (see Matthew 25:31-46 for the basis of these questions) Of course there are all very practical answers for each of those. But then there are the "outside of the box" answers. The answers that go beyond applying money to the problem. Lanny and I don't have the money so we have to think outside the box. Sometimes, I admit, I sigh and wish for a bunch of money but then I remember a lesson that I have learned as I watch my Kenyan friends deal with the poverty they face each day in their own country. Oh I know our poverty doesn't touch theirs but poverty is poverty. God said that there would always be poor in the land (Deuteronomy 15) and while our poor here may be considered differently in other countries of the world it doesn't matter. "Here" there are the poor and "here" is where I live. God has slowly been growing an awareness in me of the poor that I "see" everyday. The poor that live here in my town, on the streets that I drive, sleeping in the parks that I take my children to. The poor that go to the same Starbucks I do but for very different reasons. The poor that I serve at the homeless shelter and then meet on the street one day as I'm walking with a friend. We inhabit the same city, we both have value in the sight of God and right now, in this season I have a hand available to help them. So what does that look like and what does that mean? My Kenyan friends have shown me that money isn't always nor should it be the complete answer. The answer really lies in expressing value to that person as a person!

The past winter was really cold in my town. We were in the single digits during the day and dipping into the negatives at night. The cold was so bitter that it took your breath away; it stung as it entered your lungs, your pant legs would "freeze", your mind could not comprehend the depth of chill you immediately felt as you stepped outside. I had the option to be inside where I had an electric blanket waiting for me, where I had a furnace that ran and kept my shelter comfortable, where I had a stove top to heat water and an oven to cook a hot meal. But a growing number of people in my town didn't have those luxuries. Seemingly overnight large camps popped up, making the nightly news because of their numbers and the reasons why they found themselves living in tents in the middle of our city during deep freezes. Now there were some who purposely made a choice to become homeless for political reasons and I'm not talking about them. I'm talking about the ones who had run out of options.

These camps became the talk of the town and became a problem that our city council was struggling to address. The first time I spotted one of the camps I cried. I had heard that many children were living in these camps. It's bad enough for adults but my heart stopped when I thought about the kids trying to keep warm in our negative temps. My heart was broken.

My guess is there were 3 main responses to these camps and the residents of them. One group was probably purposely driving by the camps to keep the need and the people in front of them so God could speak. Another group, I imagine, drove past the camps but had trained their eyes and brains to not really see. Because to really see means they might have to then do something. And I'm sure there was a third group who began to choose different routes so they wouldn't have to drive by the camps at all. They were too busy to be bothered by any sort of conviction. OUCH. Yeah. I just went there. Ever been too busy to be bothered with the conviction of the Holy Spirit?

Understandably the camps made the city uncomfortable. And it's funny to see how people respond to feeling uncomfortable. Some use it to push them into action, others use it to complain, and still others will use it to deny reality. I admit, it's uncomfortable to look at people camped out, not by choice, and trying to figure out a way to provide a more stable shelter for themselves, for their families. Here's the reality...any one of us are ONE paycheck away from camping out because of necessity. And seeing people living out our deepest fears will make us behave in funny ways.

Eventually our city council removed the camps, they said it was illegal. So someone stepped up, offered an old KOA campground and said they could all move there. And just as quickly as those camps formed they were gone.

I was driving through the area the other day and missed seeing the camps. Oh, don't get me wrong. I hope, I pray those people have found assistance and ways to get back on solid ground but what I miss is the reminder they were to me to pray, to reach out in ways that God allowed me to, and to remember that God is truly my provider. I should be able to know and remember all that without the visual but as happens so often with me I forget. I need the visual. It occurred to me as well that as a whole we work very hard to remove from our line of sight that which makes us uncomfortable. We don't like to be uncomfortable so we work until we can successfully appease our conscious and our fears. What would, what could happen if we allowed our conscious and fears to motivate us to act? To reach out?

Have you ever heard yourself saying, "Someday I will go serve the homeless" or "Someday I will approach a homeless person with a bag of food", etc. I know I'm guilty of saying, "Someday I'll do _________ for the least of these" and it hit me (like a ton of bricks I might add) that I somehow have convinced myself, unknowingly, that by saying "Someday..." I ease my conscious and I prove to myself, and others, that I have good intentions...someday I will follow through on them. Problem is someday never comes, we - oh I mean I - keep saying it and never actually allow "someday" to become today!

It's my redheads that have taught me to quit saying "someday" and let it become "today". On a recent trip we were walking through an outdoor mall area. We walked by a homeless man sitting at a corner. The girls looked at me woefully and I smiled at them. I knew what they were thinking because it was the same thing I was thinking! As we passed by him a second time they pulled me aside, one speaking in my right ear and the other speaking in my left ear. "Mom," says the oldest, "can I give him my cookie?" We had just bought big, fresh gourmet cookies for later in the day. I said the only answer to say, "Yes, of course" while listening to the youngest ask me for any money I might have to give him. I sent them over to him with a cookie and some money. If I could have snapped a picture of my two redheads extending value to this man through a cookie and a few measly dollars I would have. But my heart was the only "camera" that captured the moment that day.

I don't share that example for any reason but to challenge you to turn "someday" into "today"! My girls have provided me with the greatest challenges to do that. They aren't old enough, or dare I say cynical enough, to allow the excuses and the perceived limitations to inhibit their extension of God to others. I can't even begin to tell you how proud I was of them, and how challenged I was to never let "someday" be an excuse. I think sometimes we say "someday" because we think it needs to be a big enough gesture to be really impactful but it doesn't. Most of the time it is the smallest things that make the most impact. A $1 cup of coffee for a cold man. Will it change his life? Probably not BUT it could, you just never know.

"One of the hardest things to realize is that our someday is right now." (Unknown)