Since seeking forgiveness for many years of actions that draped darkness over my soul, I have felt called to open my eyes and see the many homeless people who sell Contributors in the greater Nashville area. The Contributor is a street paper sold by vendors in public places. To qualify to be a vendor, the sellers of the papers have to be homeless or formerly homeless. Very close to my house is a mall and set of busy intersections. At several of these intersections, there are people selling papers.
There are two vendors in particular to whom I have decided to bring food. I don't want to use their real names but I don't want only refer to them as the two homeless men. For purposes of the blog, I'll call them my vendor friends. These two men are always together and helping each other out. They have introduced themselves to me as brothers. I'm not sure if they mean brothers by blood or brothers by something deeper than blood. Anyway, I try to bring them each a bag of food when I am able to do so.
Today, I saw them in the usual spot while I was on my way home from work. When I returned with the food a half hour later, they were no longer there. I drove around for a while and looked for them in a few different places, but my vendor friends were gone. Then, I drove to other places where I know other people usually sell The Contributor, but all of those vendors were gone for the night too.
My heart was heavy as I drove back home with the food. I was faced with a few options:
A) Drive home and save the food for tomorrow so I could give it to my vendor friends at a later time
B) Once home, eat the food since I hadn't eaten any supper yet.
C) Keep driving around looking for someone who could use the food
D) Call my vendor friends to find out where they were at that moment.
Option D scares me. This was why my heart was especially heavy. Vendor friend #2 gave me his cell phone number a week ago so that if something happened, I would know how to reach them. He explained that another man, such as myself, has been helping them and bought them a phone with some minutes on it for emergencies. Each of my vendor friends has been in the hospital lately. These men are in their sixties and both in bad health. They stand outside selling papers in even the heaviest of rain in order to make an honest living. It takes a toll on them.
I did not give vendor friend #2 my phone number in return. I'm still praying about whether it's God's will that I do so. I don't want to create dependence. This is the reason I tell myself for not having done so. The real reason, I fear, is that if they have my phone number and something serious does happen, I will need to take substantial action in order to help them.
I did not call them. Instead, I took the food home. I left it all bagged up and put it in the fridge so that tomorrow when I see them, I can try to give them the food right away rather than taking the time to prepare it.
I don't know if my decision was the wrong one or not.
Here's the reason I tell this story... Certainly it is not to toot my own horn and talk about feeding the poor. My reason for telling the story is this: I feel the temptation in this situation is not the choice of saving the food. The temptation and possibility for sin is in discouragement and beating myself up over what I didn't do. I made an honest attempt to do something good for other people, but my efforts didn't do anything today to actually help these two men. Focusing on the missed opportunity is how darkness creeps into a lit room.
I am very tempted and haunted by this type of thinking.
Instead of thinking this way, I should focus on the opportunity I gained. I was able to identify the discouragement creeping in and see it for what it was/is. Discouragement and beating oneself up serves only one purpose. It draws the focus of doing a good work to oneself rather than focusing on Christ and on other people. The food won't spoil in my refrigerator. My vendor friends will probably be selling papers in their usual location tomorrow, and the food will be eaten.
Maybe they had been given something by someone else and had already had their fill for that meal?
Maybe they had something else in their hands and couldn't carry the meals and water bottles I had packed.
Maybe they left early because they sold enough papers for a cheap motel room and would rather have the extra hour or two of rest than to continue to sell papers.
Maybe I'll never know why they weren't there in those moments. What I know is that even in missed opportunities, God seeks to touch our hearts. He calls us to seek him, to follow him, and to see him in others. Look at how many opportunities the apostles lost while following Jesus. He didn't turn them away. Instead, he told them stories and continued teaching them.
Or, what about the multitudes of individuals who gathered in crowds to hear Jesus speak or to ask for healing? In a crowd of tens of thousands, I'm sure many of those people were unable to physically hear a single word that came out of Jesus' mouth. But, they made the effort anyway.
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Lord Jesus,
I pray that you will continue to teach me, especially in missed opportunities. Thank you for moving me to try and then try again even though I didn't see my friends in order to help them.
Amen
