the devil’s playground

So often I sit down here at my laptop and wonder what I can write about today. What significant thing happened on the corner today? Many times I’ve written about someone new that I met. Or some event that happened while we were on our corner. Or something that happened the previous week. This week I feel compelled to write about something that happened the previous week. Or more precisely something that didn’t happen. Meetings that were supposed to take place that never happened. I have a couple of guys that I meet with on fairly regular basis. Mostly just to listen or just chat. One on Wednesday and one on Thursday. So this past week, I show up at our normal Wednesday meeting place at our agreed upon time only to find myself all alone. It happens. No big deal really. We’ll just meet again next week. Nothing is written in stone, so no harm no foul right? But my Thursday meeting was a bit different. I’ve been trying to make this one happen for a while now. I can’t remember how long ago we made the initial arrangements. But I know it was well over a year ago. Probably closer to a year and a half. And I can seriously count on one hand how many times the meeting has actually taken place. Three times. In about a year and a half. Now I usually show up knowing that I’ll get an early out. My friend told me once to "pencil him in". He says that too many things can change between Sunday and Thursday. He’s right. So this past week on Thursday, I show up to the last place that we met. The last time we met was last summer. So it’s been a while. We made arrangements last Sunday to meet at our previous spot. I thought we were both on the same page. But we weren’t. Apparently. I showed up and found a whole lot of no one. And it really didn’t surprise me. I mean, like I said in a year and a half, we’ve met three times. 3. So to see no one there, it was pretty much par for the course. I waited around from about five minutes prior to our agreed upon time until about 5 minutes or so after. I once read that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting different results. By that definition, I must be insane.

So today, as I’m heading through the serving line, I see my Wednesday guy. He explains that he was at a doctor’s appointment. I totally understand. And he has no cell phone or means for calling me, so I explain to him that it was really no problem. Seriously. We could just meet up this week and pick up where we left off last time. No problem. Minutes later, I see my Thursday guy. "Where were you" he says? I thought he was kidding. I was there man! He says he was there 10 minutes early and waited for an hour. How could that be? I was there! Seriously. Come to find out, we were at different places. The three times we’ve met, each time we’ve met at a different place. So I went to our previous place. He went to the place previous to that. I was so bummed. I felt like I had completely let him down. He said t was ok and it was just a miscommunication, but I sensed it was more than that. And I felt and feel terrible. Sure it was just a simple lunch meeting, but this has been one that has been really difficult to make happen for some reason. He even said he was going to be there early this time to surprise me. I can only imagine the disappointment as he walked away.

Here’s the thing. So often, our friends are promised things from various people. One thing I’ve always tried to do from day one in this thing was keep my word. We’ve told them from day one we’d be there every Sunday at noon, the Lord willing. To date, God’s allowed that to happen. If someone has asked for help in some way and we’ve been able to help, I think we’ve pretty much always been there. We certainly make mistakes and it’s difficult sometimes to understand how to be discerning in certain situations. But for the most part, God has blessed us with a certain sense of dependability over the course of this thing. Its one thing I attempt to stress within myself. Sometimes my memory fails me. Which is why I always carry around a small pocket notebook. New page every week. New things to remember. So if I write it down, I usually do pretty good with the follow through. So my guess is that my Thursday friend was pretty disappointed that another day came with more disappointment. From one of his Christian friends. Robin and I both see this guy so wanting to break free from his addictions and his lifestyle. He thinks he has nothing to offer. I completely disagree. He has so much to offer. So much. And I feel as though I let him down this time. And I sincerely hope that he will "pencil me in" for this week. This is a guy that, if the Lord were so willing to help us help him, the last two and a half years would be a smashing success. Not that God hasn’t already done amazing things. But if this one guy were to be blessed by the Grace of God and be released from the chains that he bears…it would just be amazing. I can just sense how badly he wants out. And he doesn’t seem to know how to completely surrender and be free. It sounds so easy. It’s so difficult. Eight years of homelessness. Countless trips to detox. 11 months in treatment at one time to drink on the very day that he was released. How? What do we do? Keep our meeting times for one. That would be a start.

And then it comes to me that there are forces that don’t want this to happen. I was talking to someone today about the devil’s playground. That place where the evil one takes all of us from time to time. Where he gains a foothold and uses us to do his dirty work. Now I’m not sure how that all works, but I know that it happens. I have things I struggle with every single day. And I ask God why? Why God, do you allow him to have his way with me? Why?! And the clear answer, to me anyway, is that as long as I continue to sin, yes even those "little sins", well that evil force that feeds on those things will continue to use me as his playground. Now I have absolutely zero training in any of this stuff, except what I’ve seen and learned during the course of my lifetime. But that’s what it seems like to me. So I look at some of our friends downtown and I think, wow, this is no playground. This is like freaking Walt Disney World with the evil one and some of our friends. The devil’s roller coaster. And it is so painful to watch. Guys literally drinking themselves to death. I just don’t get it. And at the same time, I do.

So I have two meetings this week. I pray that they both happen. I don’t want to miss a single opportunity. Not one. Not in the playground. When I was a kid, I used to love to go to the playground. Now that I’m just an older kid, not so much. But for the sake of sanity, and for our friends, I’ll venture in. Have to. I just pray that I’m equipped for the rides.

"The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing." -Albert Einstein

Peace, have a great and blessed week and make a difference.

…it matters to that one… :)

How are Sundays?

Often times I get the question from people who know what we do on Sundays. It’s a familiar question by now and one I never know quite how to answer. How are things going on Sundays? Or how are things going on the corner? And I just find myself hesitating so often in my answer because of a couple of obvious things. Number one, things are going great on that corner. For me. But I get to come back home to my nice comfortable house. My home. I have a home. Lots of our friends have no home. Obviously. So from my perspective, if I was simply looking at how things were going on any given Sunday? I’d say things are going great. I mean, God continues to supply all the things we need in so many ways it’s almost comical at times. For instance, we get bread, pastries and sandwiches from Panera Bread every Saturday night. Whatever they have left over at the end of the day, we get. To serve at our Sunday gathering in the park. This morning, I believe for the first time in over two years, we got no sliced bread. Now that may not seem like a big deal, but ever since we started going downtown on Sundays, we’ve been blessed to serve great pastries and cookies from Panera for dessert and great, fresh sliced bread with our meal. It is simply sinful to see how much we get at times. And where would it go if we didn’t get it? So last night? No sliced bread. This morning I headed over to Wal-Mart to get sliced bread to serve with our meal. So guess what happens when we are setting up to serve? The youth group from St. Vincent Depaul is there this week. The third Sunday of every month they show up en masse! And this week? Guess what they brought? Enough sliced bread, cakes, and other pastries to feed a small army. That’s how God works. He takes care of the details. I know it was only bread. But how much more symbolic does it have to be? I mean it was bread! And that kind of thing happens all the time. Little details. But those little details can often turn into much bigger things. And once again, I digress.

So back to the question. How are things on the corner? Again, for me? Great. I get to see God working and doing all sorts of cool things. Sending different churches of all denominations to help. And here are Robin and I. We don’t even belong to a church, so to speak. At least not in the traditional sense. And yet God continues to absolutely blow the doors off of this thing. I got another message from a fellow this week about his church and their desire to help. And yet another young fellow has been coming down to help and his small group wants to come and help. And on the first Sunday of the month, another church cooks the entire meal and brings all kinds of other things. And there is a core group of people that cook almost every week, or come down to serve in various capacities or just hang out. So from that perspective, things are going great. Us Christians have a place to go and serve God, and in doing so, we get to meet, serve and love our friends. And don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of our friends down there who get it. They will probably be holding the pearly gates for me, providing I make it that far. But there are those of our friends who are simply living on borrowed time. There is no question in my mind about that. I mean, to a large degree, we all are. But some of these guys seem hell bent on making it happen much faster than it needs to happen. Robin was talking to someone today and mentioned that he was resting in God’s grace. He’s continually thinking that God was taking care of things for him, even though he was just barred from the umpteenth shelter for life. How ironic is that? A homeless guy banned from a homeless shelter? Are you kidding me? Resting in God’s grace…

So how are things going on Sunday? It’s a confusing question for me. I want to show up some day and see an empty corner. I want to spend all of my days just serving God, and in the process, serving the people who maybe need it the most. Unfortunately a little thing called my job gets in the way. Today, I counted probably at least 10 or 15 people that might be able to get a little farther on this crazy journey if maybe someone would take a full time interest in them and love them in a way that maybe no one has probably ever done. That’s just 10 or 15 people that I can think if off the top of my head. And then sometimes I wonder how we ever got involved in this thing in the first place. Why us? I mean neither Robin nor myself have any kind of real "training" or whatever in this sort of thing. Why us? God? Is it only supposed to be a thing we do for a couple of hours on a Sunday? Or is it supposed to be more? I mean there’s more to it for us than a couple of hours on Sunday. Various things through the week, but there needs to be more. And maybe we’re doing all we’re supposed to be doing. Showing up each week, meeting some of the different physical needs, attempting to go a little deeper in various relationships, stuff like that. Maybe that’s it? I mean I go back to the question of why us? Because even though I say often that we are no different than a lot of our friends, some of the issues at hand are extremely difficult. The alcoholism, the substance abuse, whatever. And I just wonder when God is going to show us a miracle? And then I guess he’s shown us some already. Maybe we just haven’t been paying attention? There’s a couple or miracles though in particular that I’m praying for. Someone told me recently that God hears all our prayers and answers each one of them. Sometimes, however, the answer is just a plain old "no". I so pray that is not the answer in both of these cases. I’ll continue to pray unceasingly in both cases.

So how are Sundays? Guess it depends on who you ask?

Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus. 1 Thessalonians 5:18 (NIV)

Peace, have a great and blessed week and make a difference.

…it matters to that one… :)

Rambling Thoughts…

So I did something again this morning that I dislike probably more than anything I do related to this ministry. I sorted through the contents of eight boxes. Clothing that belonged to a fellow who left this earth about a year ago. We met his family at a memorial service for one of our friends that passed away last fall. They found out what we do in this thing and mentioned that they’d like to donate his clothing to the homeless. So a couple weeks ago, this fellow’s brother shows up at my house with 8 boxes of clothing. And said there would probably be more. I cannot explain the feelings I had at 7:30 this morning, in my garage as I opened up each individual box and sorted the various items of clothing into our containers. "Why" kept coming up for sure. Why? I believe they said this guy was in his early 40s when he took his life. Why? How do we get to the point that we decide to end it all? How? So I’m going through the boxes, wondering how in the world his mother had the strength to pack this all up and get it to us? How does a mother do that? Part of me was angry at a fellow I didn’t even know. And I realized once again how quickly someone we love can be gone. Either taken from us or just taken. And this story was pretty sad, as if any story of this magnitude wouldn’t be. He took his life in his mother’s home and she happened to be the one who found him. I cannot imagine. No way to understand something like that. No way.

And then I go downtown today and see our friends. The weather has been very unseasonably warm here lately, so I expected a pretty decent crowd today. And that’s what we got. Lots of people. New faces. Old faces. I met Howard from New York City. I noticed him in the line as I was doing my normal schmoozing and glad handing. It’s probably one of my favorite times of the day. Walking through the line and shaking hands, getting hugs, just seeing everyone again. All good. So I first saw Howard in the line. Very well dressed. He said he saw us setting up and wondered what we were doing. Turns out he works for an airline and was just killing time. Said he loved the food. And he does some similar ministry type work in NYC. He was impressed with what God was doing on that corner. I am more than impressed. Blown away is a more apt phrase for me. So I saw lots of old faces and a few new ones also.

Another old friend was back again today. He’d been away for awhile and came back last week for the first time in quite a while. He’s a guy that I really love. He’s been around on and off since we first started going down to that corner. In fact he introduced me to the Office, that place in the middle of the park where some of our friends used to ply their wares, so to speak. So normally when we don’t see him for extended periods, it usually means that he is either in jail or he is ducking the police Gestapo that patrols the park area harassing the homeless folks. Now don’t get me wrong, our friends do enough to get into plenty of trouble on their own, but sometimes it seems maybe a little power goes to a guy’s head. The term harassment definitely comes to mind. So anyway, our friend has been free of any legal issues for a couple of weeks and has been back to see us the past couple of weeks. He’s just a guy that both Robin and I have become very fond of. He has the obvious drinking problem. As do lots of our friends. But this guy, from the first time we met him, has seemed to want to do something to change that. Just doesn’t know how. Been through various forms and methods of treatment over the years, just none effective enough to get him to where he needs to be. Or maybe he just wasn’t ready to be done yet. I mean a person has to want to be done with that lifestyle and make a commitment and even then it’s a battle. To put it mildly.

Today on the way downtown, Robin and I were discussing this fellow. How could we help? I mean if we don’t isn’t he on his way out of here anyway. Literally and figuratively? It’s really no different than a fellow taking his life in an immediate manner via an overdose or whatever other method a person might choose. Just a much slower and more painful way to go. To the guy inflicting the pain upon himself and those on the outside watching. If a fellow shows up at the emergency room with a .5 blood alcohol content level, he’s pretty close to doing the deed anyway right? The legal level in Nebraska is .08. So a .5? Are you kidding me? Well, we are supposed to hear from our friend this week about a plan to get things turned around. That’s the first step. Making that phone call. Next step? Who knows? We’ll cross that bridge later. We have to take it a baby step at a time. And God help us, I hope and pray it’s not already too late.

This is something I’m going to lift straight from one of my daily devotionals from this past week. I guess it sums up a lot of things I was feeling today. Some of the words are a little harsh and I probably would have written it a little differently, but the meat of the message fits what I feel on occasion.

Have you been let down, disappointed and thoroughly disgusted with the people who you have tried to help? Has your experience affected your desire to want to get involved again? In other words, why help someone who is just going to make waste of all your effort, right? Wrong! An appropriate heart for service is to the Lord, not man. Man may be the recipient, but the author is God. 1 Peter 4:10-11 says, "Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully administering God's grace in its various forms. If anyone speaks, he should do it as one speaking the very words of God. If anyone serves, he should do it with the strength God provides, so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ. To him be the glory and the power for ever and ever. Amen."

Peace, have a great and blessed week and make a difference.

…it matters to that one… :)

Down by the River…

Each week, we travel from our comfortable suburban home here in the frozen tundra that is Nebraska to a downtown street corner. We all put on our warmest clothes, given that most winter Sundays the elements can be downright dangerous. Now today was a beautiful day, but totally out of the norm. As I’ve stated so many times, some of our friends live out in this crazy stuff. I do not know how they do it. One fellow that endured the cold last year in a tent on the river, using candles as his primary source of heat, is now staying at a home that I believe is designed for veterans. Good thing, because Robin and I were wondering how in the world we’d keep him stocked with candles for yet another winter. I believe his sole mission most days last winter was to gather as many candles as he could to simply survive. No more. And we see him a couple times a week now and he looks so much better. So he’s not outdoors anymore, but one couple are on our minds a lot during the cold winter months. It’s a very strange situation for me to warp my feeble brain around. She actually has a job and I believe it’s full-time or at least as close to full-time as it can be. And she just happens to be the young lady I wrote about a few weeks ago who appeared to have a case of frostbite on her legs. As I mentioned last week that seemed to be healing up, but it still looked a bit rough.

This couple, these people are one of the reasons we do what we do. At least that’s my belief. But I mean, how in the world do you function out of a tent in the middle of winter? Especially if you have to punch in to a time clock every day. Her husband is a fellow that I’ve seen around, most Sundays, for probably a couple of years now. He makes "heating stoves" out of coffee cans for warmth in the winter months. His appearance is somewhat striking, of only for the soot on his hands and face. I say that only because it just magnifies the dangerous conditions that they live under. First of all let me stress this again. Their primary residence is a tent. On the river. In Omaha, Nebraska. As many times as I’ve seen pictures of people living under porches, in cardboard boxes, whatever, I absolutely cannot get my head around living in a tent in this city. Just can’t do it. Secondly, the conditions in which they live have to be fairly dangerous. Open flames in a nylon tent just don’t seem to be a good match. And I cannot begin to imagine the things they must be inhaling in that environment. I’ve camped before. I know how much fun it can be to set up a campsite, tent, fire pit, etc., but this ain’t camping. This is living. I know that whenever I’ve camped, towards the end of the experience, no matter how much fun I’m having, when I think of home, I don’t think of a tent. We camped with some great friends in Charlotte once. At a campground. We played putt-putt, fished, all the things that make the experience what it is. And these were great friends. Family even. But I never had any visions of making that my home. By the grace of God, I didn’t have to. These folks, for a myriad of reasons, most of which I have no way of knowing, call this type of living "home".

Now I know that we are only on this gigantic ball of dirt for a very short time. I get that. And we are really all homeless in the big picture. I get that. But to spend what time we do have here in this kind of environment, well that just baffles me. And I guess it’s these kinds of situations that keep me going back to our corner. And mind you, this is a couple that rarely asks for anything. Lots of the people that we meet on a weekly basis ask for help with all kinds of crazy things. Then there are folks like this who show up, have a decent meal with us, maybe grab a few pieces of clothing or whatever else the Lord sends us with, and then they disappear into the downtown area among all the others that we meet with weekly. Only to end up at their home later. That home that just happens to be down by the river. Which is probably pretty cool at times, at least in the summer or spring months. And maybe for a couple of days at a time. But I’d guess cool is not a word most would use to describe these living conditions, especially during the brutal winter months her in Nebraska. I know there are times when I’m in my home where I get a chill and I just can’t shake it. Can’t imagine what that must be like for these folks. I know there are times when Robin wants a little something warm to drink. We simply turn on a gas burner and voila! Heat. And minutes later, warm tea. How does that work for this couple?

I’m not sure what compelled me to write about this situation. Only that I know how blessed I am and I sometimes wonder how they are where they are and how we are where we are? How does that work? That I am blessed to be where I am and they are one of many who are where they are? How? Why? And I wonder what 2009 will bring? With the economy the way it is and with a change in leadership in our country, what does the future hold for us? Will there be more down by the river? I’m obviously rambling, but it just struck me today. This being Super Bowl Sunday and with all the excess that will be spent today on a football game. A football game! Don’t get me wrong. I absolutely love football. Especially college football. And I’ll definitely watch the game today. I read an article that mentioned how much money a Super Bowl brings to the local economy of a city hosting such an event. In 2007, it was approximately a half a billion dollars. Half a billion! I can’t even imagine what that looks like. And then we have our 800 Billion – 1 Trillion dollar stimulus package. These are absolutely stunning and ridiculous numbers to me. What could that much money look like if you stacked it all up? My goodness. And what would it mean to a couple living on the river? I suppose it could make all the difference in the world. A thought to ponder of course. I don’t know how this is all supposed to work. How we are all supposed to coexist among the dichotomy that exists? I just don’t know. I suppose we’ll just keep showing up on that corner and God will reveal to us what He’ll reveal. And in the meantime, we’ll keep doing what it is He has us doing. In the here and now. A friend of ours, who is moving to South Carolina, used a phrase once that stuck with me. He mentioned that sometimes we try to find all the answers to the stories around us and mostly they are just not answerable. But the phrase that struck me went something like this – God, I’ve never run a universe before, so I’ll leave that to you. You do a pretty amazing job at it and I would most definitely screw it up.

So for our friends living down by the river? We’ve offered to help them get a place for the winter months and they politely declined. I guess the only thing we can do is keep offering and keep praying. I can’t run their world. Down by the river. I can barely manage mine. :)

Peace, have a great and blessed week and make a difference.

…it matters to that one… :)