There are 10,000 advocacy groups that one can join and never have "to do" anything. There are all kinds of causes that make great T-shirts and sweet bumper stickers but never require a person to work for it. Just buy it. Just buy into it.
This isn't going to be a rant on the destructiveness of well intentioned efforts that don't follow through on the long haul because that's too easy to do. It's just too easy to criticize good intentions and it doesn't help if it isn't providing solutions. Although there may be some criticisms on certain approaches I hope to cover those criticisms, if they're made, with well thought out solutions that have come from getting "dirty".
For over two years now a small group of us Christ-Followers have been moving people from homeless shelters into housing. We are approaching some 155 moves so far. This has been an ongoing weekly work(year round) that requires some structure but for the most part it requires only a vehicle to move furniture and a handful of laborers. No committees and no Board Meetings.
Our whole approach has been to follow the direction of Jesus and His teaching on loving our neighbor. It's been the fishes and loaves way of the heart that has prodded us to bring what we have and seriously watch God provide stuff in an instant.[Just ask me about the fishes and loaves way if you don't understand what that means.}
Just last week two of our volunteers met up with a woman moving out of one of the shelters into her new apartment and she needed a bed. So they jumped into their truck and began to troubleshoot when all of a sudden they saw a sign on someone's front lawn that said, FREE BED. So there you go. Simple and just. God at work.
It is these moments that have patterned the way of the cross to cut it's way into our lives and our hearts. For those who have experienced the loneliness and dehumanizing pains that come with being left homeless we gather furniture for their empty apartments. Do you see how God's works that in us. He gathers goodness and pushes it into our empty hearts.
What it does not require is a 501C3 non-profit filing or insurance or even a budget. We have been approached with structures, programatic suggestions and cautionary approaches. Each one of these approaches have far more proven that they are quite often the things that create obstacles in outreach, evangelism and servanthood.
We cannot expect to engage people in hardships and pain and expect to be able to walk away unscathed. Martin Luther King, Jr. talked about how if we show great love we will experience great disappointment. That's hard to walk with. That's really hard to walk with. And we are asked to walk with that for a while and not just a little while.
So you may ask, why bother if it's gonna hurt? Because the world is full of hurt and God is absolutely in control and we are not. He has been at work to restore this broken place and He is still at work and He will complete His work. He is Eternal which means He is the beginning and the end of what we know as time. Eternity is the bookends of what we call time. We are in between forever and ever because He surrounds it all.
Now we can be in awe of that and behold the beautiful mystery of our Lord and King and then be a part of His bringing His body into it's intended fullness here on earth as He is doing through the Church. Or we can avoid it and pretend that hell is not ravaging the lives of our neighbors.
The weapons of our warfare are not constructs that bring about a violent means but they are instruments of peace that pave a road to the King Eternal- Jesus. Moving some furniture has helped pave the road of trust for folks that are hard hearted towards Jesus and His body - the Church. Sharing food and clothes has turned God's kids away from being within a yard of Hell. It's no wonder Jesus did this stuff so often. Whether he fed the hungry or held a conversation with rich people, His heart poured out the same in very practical ways - food and conversation. Simple tools that we all can use. God at work.
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