"Oh my goodness! This is such a blessin! Thank you so much!" She says. As I look into her beautiful eyes water starts to take residence. You could tell that she didn't quite know what was going on until we said "Merry Christmas." The smile that radiated from her precious face could have stopped traffic it wa so blinding.I didn't get to find out her name but her face I will never forget..."They got bags! Duffel bags!" She screamed riding her bike down the street and they came out of the wood works. " Would you like a bag and a blanket?" We asked them as they came by the masses. "I want one!" "Me too!" "I want a blanket too!" They swarmed the car like seagulls to bread crumbs. Where did all these people come from? We don't have enough bags! We need more bags! All these thoughts ran through my head. The piercing of the heart for a need so much greater than your own changes your perspective on what you have been given....
As we pull away all out of bags and head back to the distribution site in downtown "(Gasp) there are babies!" she said. I look over and there on the sidewalk stands a father with his double stroller and 5 children. Two of them follow behind holding onto those bags for dear life with such joy in their step. They had their very own bags. As I turn back to look one more time I see the one year old screaming in the front seat while the father feeds the 7-9 month old in his arms and the others stand around him begging for his attention....
As we left it hit me.... without the grace of God that could have very easily been my family after the loss of my father. An overwhelming feeling of the grace of God for a mother and my family covered me. I became very quiet sitting in the back of the SUV with a new reality sitting on my chest and now carved into my heart.
For so long I must confess I resisted homeless ministry because I didn't think it was for me. Other people are better at that. They have sweeter spirits so they don't need me. But really how selfish can one person be?
"These people, most of them sleep all day because they need to be up at night to watch their stuff and just to be able to survive. This is their reality." A veteran shared this with me. My heart stand there broken.
With tears flooding my face I drove the 45 minutes home that evening a changed woman. Who am I to desire a husband or a fixed car or good health when most of these people don't even have a single person to talk to let alone food or shoes?
We look past these people. We drive down the road thinking all of them are just drug attacks and drunkards and yet most are either veterans of war, sick or just in need of help. We see them as nothing yet each of them has a name, they have a mother, a father and they have a story that desires to be heard. They have hearts that love and dreams they want to come true.
The quote from the founder of The Giving Spirit rings true to my ears a day later, "Today you will realize how easy it really is." He was referring to helping meet the needs of the largest community in Los Angeles. Twenty eight thousand survival bags have been passed out all over Los Angeles in the last 15ish years. Twenty six hundred in the last two days. All because pe
ople just want to love people and give them hope. And that is only this one ministry.
When I asked a friend who ministers and has a passion of the homeless about how he deals with such a burden he stated this which I thought was just beautiful: "After a while, a homeless/mentally ill person is the same as any other person." This response amidst other wisdom he gave, spoke to my heart. What if we all looked at that community like that? What if we did something about it? What if we didn't let the fear of the unknown control us? How many needs can we meet? How many circumstances could we change? “It's hard to beat a person who never gives up.”-Babe Ruth.
What if we were people that never gave up on people let alone people in need? I wonder what the world would be like...
If you would like to know of a few homeless ministries I personally support:
The Giving Spirit: http://www.thegivingspirit.com/
The Hollywood House of Hospitality :https://www.facebook.com/HollywoodHouseOfHospitality
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