Since June the husband and I have been volunteering as leaders with our church's youth group. Our church and the opportunity to be so involved when we will be here for such a short time has been a great blessing to us. The church has been doing something they call the $100 Challenge for awhile now. P Norm (as we endearingly refer to our pastor) challenged the congregation to donate $100 each week to help the community for an entire year. Each week a different individual donates a $100 bill, and a small group or another group in the church takes that $100 and does something within the Santa Rosa and Escambia counties to help. This week the girls in my youth group took the $100.
Pensacola has more homeless people in it than any city I've ever lived in or near. While the numbers aren't actually that high, the undeniable presence of the homeless was something foreign to me when I first moved here. Despite my education in Sociology and having taken several classes that examined poverty and homelessness, I refused to buy into the seemingly Liberal agenda that homeless people were actually helpless. I believed that no matter what circumstances you've been in you can always get a job at McDonald's and survive - after all, I did survive off of my Pizza Hut income, supplemented by my income from Subway. While I still don't understand all of the ways people become homeless that don't include laziness or a heavy drug addiction, I have gained new perspective.
With the $100 we decided to pack 10 reusable shopping bags with toiletries, nonperishable food items and other necessities. We then went out to downtown Pensacola early in the morning last Saturday and drove around looking for homeless people to hand them out to. The first man we found as we drove around the backside of a strip of restaurants and cam upon him digging in the dumpster for food. Thinking about how dehumanizing the idea of digging through mass amounts of garbage for the smallest amount of salvageable nourishment is I couldn't help but feel so incredibly sad. But when we gave him the bag of items and he responded just as I expected - apathetic. He said thank you, but didn't seem very thankful. The next two people we came across were the same.
The fourth man we found sitting in the park. It was early in the morning and cold. He sat bundled up so tightly you could just see his eyes peaking out from his jacket. We parked the truck across the street and a few of the girls got out to bring him a bag. They walked over, explained to him what we were doing and he accepted the bag. As he opened it and examined it contents he became so overjoyed that he threw his hands up in the air. He thanked the girls so thoroughly and genuinely, we could see his appreciation and thankfulness from across the street. As the girls headed back over to the truck he stood and waved to us and gave us thumbs up with the biggest smile on his face until we drove away and could no longer see him. As the morning progressed others were embarrassed, ashamed, some crass and mean, some tried to ignore us. We even approached a man who responded "I appreciate what you're doing...but I'm an artist, not homeless. I just like to dress this way." Oops. The very last man we came to was adding layers of sweaters on the street corner as we pulled up. We handed him a bag and he immediately began praising God and telling us how much we had blessed him with our small gift.
No matter my previous misconceptions, these two men completely changed my heart. Their joy and gratefulness from our simple gift broke my heart and warmed my soul simultaneously. I felt that no matter what the circumstances that rendered them homeless, they truly needed help and were overjoyed to receive it. Furthermore, it revealed to me that it's not my job to judge these people. I'm called to serve. James 2:15-17 says "15Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. 16If one of you says to him, 'Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed,' but does nothing about his physical needs, what good it is? 17 In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead." This is just one of numerous scripture references that instruct us to help those in need. Not once does it say anything like "judge the reason for the need before you meet it" or "determine the true need of the person before you help them". It quite simply and clearly says to help.
