Friday, October 26, 2018

Least of These


Each day when I wake up, I do my bathroom stuff, then come out and check my phone for appointments I have that day, or messages I need to know about.  Today when I checked, I saw one from a good friend of ours…I’ll call her Sarah.  Sarah’s immediate family consists of herself, her husband of almost 30 years, and a daughter who is now a young adult.  They were our neighbors for several years, and we became well-acquainted with them over the years.
Sarah texted me this morning before I woke, telling me she was homeless as her husband was seeing another woman, filed for divorce, and threw her out of the house via temporary restraining order.  She said she was living at a homeless shelter in central Wichita, but had spent some nights in her car before getting a bed at the shelter.  This was all quite a shock to her, as she had no clue what was going on.
Additionally, Sarah’s husband cleaned out the bank accounts and absconded with a lot of community property.  The hearing on the temporary order is this coming Tuesday when it will either be lifted, modified, or made permanent.  She has very little in the way of “things” right now, and an income of a little over $900 a month from a disability.  Sarah was in shock, had no idea what to do next, and was pretty much lost.
I texted Sarah and invited her to come to the office so we could talk.  She did, and we talked for an hour or more.  As today was her birthday, I took her to lunch and we talked more.  We talked about a lot of things, but one thing stands out.  Sarah, almost 50 years old, raised middle class, living a middle class life, suddenly within minutes was thrust into the culture of the homeless.  She has no family she can rely upon, and was able to sleep on the floor of a friend’s house for a short time, but needed to quickly do something besides that.  So she found the Interfaith Inn in downtown Wichita.  It was there where she ran headlong into the homeless and poverty culture, which provided her with an additional shock to her already fragile situation.
She said to me, “Jay, I don’t even know the language they are speaking.  I don’t understand what they are saying.”  Additionally, she went on, they behave differently; they think differently; they think of their families differently; they live differently; they use money differently…in short, the entire world view of the homeless and poverty-stricken is different than the typical middle class outlook on life.
That, to Sarah, seemed to be the biggest hurdle of all…the sudden immersion in another culture and another way of life and living…no, make that survival.  And that’s what most people don’t “get” when thinking of ways to work with the homeless and poverty-stricken folks.  Politicians don’t have a clue.  Bureaucrats don’t have a clue.  Churches don’t, by and large, have a clue.  And the general public certainly doesn’t have a clue.
The old, “pull yourself up by your bootstraps,” is a good one-liner, but is useless in the poverty and homeless culture.  These people don’t have bootstraps…and if they happen to have them, they haven’t a clue how to grab hold of them; they haven’t a clue what they are for; they haven’t a clue what it means to pull themselves up by them.  The barriers to an education, gainful employment, and middle class life start with having to obtain an ID, which means they have to have Internet access, transportation, a mailing address (not a P.O. Box) to have the ID mailed to, money to send off to get a birth certificate, marriage certificate, etc., a utility bill or some such to use as proof of address, and so on.  Additionally, they need to know the state or jurisdiction where their birth certificate is kept, which for some is an unknown.
Getting a valid ID is just almost impossible for a homeless person.  And without a valid ID, there is no job.  There is no renting an apartment.  There is no checking into a motel.  In many cases the shelters and pantries are closed to them.  Government assistance is difficult or impossible to get without a valid ID.  The middle class and ruling class have effectively relegated the homeless person without an ID to the status of non-person.  He or she doesn’t exist.  And the barriers to getting an ID are pretty much insurmountable.
I know I’ve talked about this before…but it hurts me greatly to see this culture relegated into non-existence.  These are human beings.  These are people.  These are the “least of these” that I believe will surround the throne of God Himself while those of us who had lives of comfort are judged according to whether or not we recognized these people as our neighbors and loved them as we loved ourselves.

Friday, October 05, 2018

God At Work



”Driven”



RiverWalk Church of Christ
Wichita Ks<span style= 
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What follows was written by a dear friend who I have known since her childhood days.  Her story is real.  It is riveting.  It is brutally honest.  If you follow this blog, you know I’ve talked of her in prior posts.  Recently, she wrote and posted this on Facebook.  Somehow, it went viral and she has over 87,0000 shares and 18,000 comments on this post.  Even if you’re familiar with her story, read it again.  And again.  And know that God does indeed work in the hearts and lives of men and women.
If someone would’ve told me three years ago what the love of Christ would do in my heart and life I would have given you and God the middle finger. If someone would’ve told me that in the next three years that same God that I spent the last nine running away from would restore relationships with my family and with my children...out of fear…I would’ve told you I’ll only mess it up. Three years ago, I had two options to die or live, and to be completely honest I didn’t want either of the two but somewhere within my broken heart I chose to reach out that day and went to detox. (Kicking and screaming might I add)
I had about two weeks clean when I was invited to a Bible study at a little coffee shop that I really had no interest in going to at the time. It was in that place that I met a woman and eventually an entire family that whether by word or selfless deed would show me the grace and love of Christ. There was something different in this woman that The Lord used to speak truth into my heart. She still does. 
Samantha Sutton Duncan and Heath Duncan I am forever grateful to you both for loving me and showing me grace and a different way of life.
I’m grateful to my family…all of my sisters and brothers for all that you are. Which is a lot of goodness. Thank you to all the new relationships and reconnections that have been beautifully placed in my life. I deeply love you all and I’m so excited for what the future holds.
But beyond all of the many blessings and even beyond my sobriety I am thankful for the gospel of Jesus Christ. I don’t deserve a single ounce of your never-ending eternal love and yet here you are still loyal and so faithful in all your promises. You and I both know God that it wouldn’t have mattered if a million someone’s told me what all you could do within my life over the past three years. But you had a very specific way of revealing it to my heart, because you know every intricate part about us.
To all the men and woman reading this that struggle with addiction...there is hope. You are not too far gone. You are not forgotten, and you have a father in heaven longing for you to let him in.
To the children and the families affected by addiction. Do not lose hope and NEVER cease praying.