Reaching Out To The Homeless
Mark John Ostrum - 2004-11-06 19:14:00
There are millions of homeless people in the United States. It wasn't too long ago that I was counted as one among them. The causes of homelessness are incredibly varied. For me the causes included among other things suddenly losing my job, drug abuse, and emotional distress due to a failed marriage. Most, if not all, of these circumstances were of my own making and the result of bad choices.
Having been homeless, I know the pain it causes – the uncertainty of where my next meal was going to come from, where I was going to sleep, how I was going to bathe. The emotional toll is incredible. The most difficult thing is coming out of homelessness once there.
Believe it or not, many homeless people are educated, degreed persons. I held a degree in computer science when I was homeless. But once homeless it is next to impossible for one to find gainful employment no matter how well educated they are. No company will hire a person who lives on the streets for a professional position. A homeless person couldn’t even get a job flipping burgers or cleaning toilets without a permanent address.
So what could I do as a homeless person? My path was to seek help from anyone and everyone I could think of, especially churches, and to cuss out God in the process. I found no help anywhere. Almost everyone turned me away. Maybe it was because I had a newer car, which ultimately was repossessed. Maybe it was because I had my cat with me. I don't know. It doesn't matter.
What does matter is that I depended on the charity of others. I used God's word to justify my expectation of handouts. I also attempted to get on the government dole. If you want to know what true humility is, spend a half a day at the welfare office trying to get financial assistance only to be told it is not a gift, but a loan that required repayment and you had no hope of finding a decent job again. Being broke, and taking a loan from the government makes no sense.
I relied heavily on charity and the government to bring me out of homelessness and poverty. I was wrong. Instead I should have relied on God's word and his promises to help me, to call upon him. On August 15, 2004 he blessed me with the ability to rely on him alone. Faced with certain homelessness once again, I turned to him and prayed that if it was his will for me to be homeless, then may his will be done. On August 16 he opened a door that ultimately prevented me from going homeless again, as well as dozens of other doors. My ministry (Seeking Real Truth Ministries – http://www.seekingrealtruth.net) is one of those doors. My new job as a Software Engineer is another.
Now that I have a home I can afford to pay for and the security of a great job, I carry bibles with me everywhere I go. If I happen to see someone who is homeless, I approach and offer him or her a bible. If he or she accepts it, we will likely talk a little. If not, I do not force it on them. The message I give to those who accept the gift of God's Word is, "I know what it is like to be homeless. I've been there. The Lord has done some powerful things in my life to turn things around. If you read his word, read it completely, it can turn your life around in amazing ways if you allow God to work in you."
So far I have given out one bible to one homeless man. “Keith” became homeless because of the fires around San Diego in the last year, which destroyed his home and his life. We talked for about 15 or 20 minutes before it started raining that evening. He tucked the bible into his waistband of his jeans, covering it with his shirt, and said, "I really appreciate that you gave me this bible. It means much more than any of the money I get from people."
He then told me a story of a little girl in a car driven by her mother. He had approached the car to ask for money. The little girl, about five or six years old had compassion for Keith. So she took off her jacket and offered it to him. “It broke my heart,” Keith said. “There was no way I could use that tiny jacket. I was unable to even take the money her mother offered me.” What a wonderful way God touched the little girl's heart with compassion on the man.
Just a few minutes before I met Keith I also offered the bible to another homeless man. He categorically refused it. I simply said, "Are you sure? No cost, it's free." He shook his head and his hand at me, turned and ran away.
It is often frightening to walk up to homeless people even though I was homeless for a period of time. Many of them are very scary. Having been homeless in Los Angeles, California is even more frightening. I received many warnings to not go down to the 'skid row' section of town where all the shelters were because "they will kill you in a minute for your car, your jacket, your hat, anything you have."
Yet when you come down to think about it from the heart, you will realize that the homeless are even more frightened than you could possibly be in approaching them. They are also very humble. They have to ask for things from people they don't know just to survive. I remember trying to find a way to ask campers with families if they will share their dinners with me when I was homeless (I chose to live in the campgrounds of the Angeles Crest National Forest during this time). I was totally humiliated by that, but I also knew if I did not ask, I would not eat. I never asked for money from anyone I didn’t know. I just wanted to eat, sleep, and live in peace.
There is no peace being homeless. For whatever reason homelessness comes, it is a dangerous, frightening place to be. As a homeless person I was in constant fear. This is why I now am able to step out of my own comfort zone, and am striving to do it more and more; to share the blessings God has given to me with those who are where I was. It is my gift of gratitude to the Lord Jesus for touching my very soul and resurrecting it from the grave. It is also an opportunity for me to share the grace of Jesus Christ with someone who really needs it.
Jesus reached out to the poor, the destitute, the demon possessed, the prostitutes, the lepers, the lowest segments of society. He didn’t wait for them to come to him, he went to them; he sought them out. Today’s world considers the destitute lazy, the demon possessed psychotic, the prostitute immoral. The lepers of today are those dying of AIDS.
How comfortable will you be to seek out and reach out to the types of people Jesus reached out to? What opinion would your friends have if you became intimate friends with the “scum of the earth”, choosing to seek out and spend time with them instead? I urge you to carefully read through the Gospels again and again to really find out for yourself who Jesus touched, and who called him a worker of Satan because of it. Then, pray to the Lord for courage to take a genuine step of faith. Pray for the ability to go way out of your own comfort zone to do the work he did.