Posts from ‘Homelessness’
Fast Food Angel
The woman didn’t look like an angel. She was short and squat and tired looking, with three squabbling kids, all under the age of ten. My friends and I were just behind her in line and we watched as she negotiated the counter, getting her children’s orders straight, taking her coin purse out of her shoulder bag and carefully counting out the money. She was wearing some sort of cleaner’s uniform and a pair of old shoes with the heels turned down, and she looked as though she’d had a long, hard day.
Just as she received her order, an ill-dressed man sidled up to the line. “Spare change?” he muttered.
The man reeked of alcohol. His long grey-streaked black hair was dull and greasy and he had obviously been sleeping in his clothes for God knows how long. We all shook our heads and averted our eyes, and so did the cleaning lady. Continue Reading
We look for opportunities to help, we never think those opportunities will come to us. One night in January of 2002, opportunity knocked on our door.
Once a month, on Friday nights, a small group of us would gather upstairs at the student union to read scripture and talk about our lives. Normally, these meetings would go on for an hour or two and then we’d go our separate ways.
During this time, I was new to faith. After being rear ended by a semi earlier that year, it gave me time to reflect on the direction and purpose of my life. I felt lost. Faith was like a distant shadow in my life, and while I could always feel it, I didn’t know what it meant. I tried churches, I tried other small groups, but they always ended up the same. I felt like a square peg trying to fit into a round hole. Continue Reading
He was skinny. That was the first thing anyone noticed about him. But he was a friendly sort whose campaign trail meandered in and out the cars in the Ingles parking lot. He greeted everyone with a humorous smile.
“Hey, there, how y’all doin’ this mornin’?” That’s how everyone greets everyone else in the Ingles parking lot in this little town.
His tweed-colored coat, black, brown, gray, was a little thin, a little tattered. But his look was honest. He’d look you in the eye and you knew, here was an honest politician. He could brush against the rich and the poor alike and shake hands with young and old. There was no duplicity here, no hypocrisy. He was interested in everyone. And you just knew that he would never change, even if he became mayor; he’d never be uppity. He was intrinsically humble. What you see is what you get, his aura whispered. Continue Reading
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