What Breaks My Heart?

Prologue: Recently Allen Hoskyn, one of my favorite pastors, posed this question, and then followed up with his response on the topic.  Lisa Johnson, a pastor at our church, followed on with a wonderful post that really hit home for me.  Mine isn't anything original, it's probably not one that is that different from anyone else.  But it's been nagging me more and more recently.  It wasn't until Allen put a "name" to it, and Lisa gave me some clarity, that I was able to crystallize it.

In a sense, I've been brooding about this topic for the last few months, since before Christmas.  It led me to a New Year's resolution, that I haven't shared, until now, due to my usual - fear, inertia, lack of knowing what to do.  In the following post on "What Breaks My Heart", I'm going to use "we" a lot, and I mean that completely.  When I say we, I'm including me, and in many cases, I'm as bad or worse than most, so I embrace the we very much in what I say.

The last several months, I've been cursed (blessed?) by multiple trips to Houston.  The curse, or blessing, may be that the area I'm traveling to has a great number of homeless people begging at the traffic lights.  Not sure if it is the area, the fact that there is so much traffic, the large overpasses and underpasses, but there are many homeless people walking up and down the pavement, walking up to your car, looking longingly, hoping for some sort of handout.  Many of them have signs, various sad stories, some even use humor, like the one sign that said, "My wife had a better divorce attorney".  One guy always has a little dog with him, looks like a chihuahua.  I've even thought about offering to buy the dog from him and fly it home with me to give it a better home, but then again, that's probably the only possession that man has.

The images of these people haunts me, and each time I go back to Houston, which is every couple of weeks, the haunting's start up again.  As noted above, I have thought of things to do, I've packed up some cans of food in plastic bags with a bottle of water, but that's as far as it's gone.  I've thought about this, over-thought it and haven't been able to get myself past the thought stages.  What good will it do?  If I offer some food, some water to one of the people begging, will it help him or her?  What about the dozens that are on the next several street corners?  How do I help them, what can I do to help them?  And yet again, still, I do nothing.  Which is why my heart is broken.

Much closer to home, the issue hit us even harder, because it was someone we knew very well.  Right before Christmas, our one son Patrick got together with a friend for coffee.  When he came home, he said, "Their family doesn't have any money, so they're not having Christmas, can we invite them to our house for Christmas dinner?".  We immediately started thinking of the reasons why this wouldn't work, it was short notice, we wouldn't want to offend them, do we have enough food, etc.  It struck me the innocence of Patrick's request, the lack of any trepidation to do this, and our immediate thought process was all the reasons why it wouldn't work.  We ended up buying them a gift card from Publix, but we missed such a golden opportunity to be the hands and feet of God. Which is why my heart is broken.

We sit in our pews at church, we sing songs, we pray, we read the Bible, we do Bible studies.  But are we doing God's work?  Are we embracing God's people.  Not just those who look like us, who act like us, who are in the same socio-economic stratus with us.  Are we willing to not just give money to the poor, are we willing to actually reach out and talk to them, embrace them as human beings, give of ourselves, follow Jesus' teachings when he said, "Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of Mine, you did for Me.  

As noted above, I've been frozen into inertia, not knowing what to do, not wanting to offend people, not knowing how to make a dent into the huge mountain of homelessness and poverty that we face at the moment.  Seeing those people, suffering on the streets, looking for a hand, looking for some slight acknowledgement of humanity and compassion haunts me and brings me to tears each time I go there.  Knowing that there are people in my community in the same place, suffering the same fate, rips me apart.  It finally hit me recently and Lisa Johnson reinforced it for me today.  We can't solve it all.  But we can at least touch one person.  If each of us just starts with one person or one family, can you imagine the impact we could make?

Many years ago, I read a quote, I think it was credited to Bono from U2, "People say, the world is the way that it is, and you can't do a damn thing about it.  I'm doing a damn thing."  For my New Year's resolution, I decided, I'm going to do a damn thing.  I'm tired of calling myself a follower of Jesus Christ, and not doing anything to further his kingdom in this world.  I decided that while I can't fix the mammoth problem we face, I can at least touch a few people along the way.

Will my heart continue to be broken?  You betcha!  I'm sure it will be broken even more if I actually get out of the pew and see and experience those around me that are worried about where they're going to sleep tonight rather than if they'll have enough in their 401(k) plan to retire.  But I have to do something.  I have to do a damn thing.  I'll let you know how it goes.