Hello and welcome to my new blog! Something happened recently that gave me the inspiration to finally start writing this blog, and I’m about to share it.
Lately, I hadn’t been making much progress with fundraising (or any, for that matter). I have been building my relationship with God a lot stronger and deeper for the last two weeks (ish), because I know that in order for any good work to be carried to completion it must have a strong foundation. I have been reading all over the place in scripture, including Genesis, 1 Samuel, Nehemiah, Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Daniel, Hosea, Luke, John, 1 Corinthians, Ephesians, Colossians, and Revelation. It was this Bible-reading-rampage that inspired me to return to some sermons my older brother introduced me to the last time I visited Indiana (where I was born). Watching a series by John Mark Comer on prayer, I was led to inspiration and discovery in my prayer life.
Here’s where the story begins. Getting into my truck, I drove to Jackson Park in Hendersonville to find a place to try out contemplative prayer, as well as my new hammock. I wanted to intentionally rest in God’s presence and take comfort in his all surpassing peace. I started walking down a trail that runs through town called Oklawahah Greenway, when I found a homeless man sitting on a log beside the trail. Walking up to him, I got the feeling that I’ve had before that God put him on my path and the Holy Spirit pressed my heart to talk to him. I asked him if he needed any help, and uncertain in his response, he said that a couple dollars would be nice. I happily obliged and asked if I could talk with him. “Pull up a stump,” he replied.
The man said his name was Jean. People who know him called him Jean’O (for purposes of not being sure if I heard him right, I’m just gonna refer to him as Jean). I asked how long he’d been out here, and he said that he’d been living on the streets for 30 years. He said that there were scary things and bad people out there, and a couple times when trying to describe the experience as a whole, he said it was “rough”. I asked him how life had been recently and he told me that his mother was in an expensive lawsuit, and that he had been hit by a truck a couple months ago. In addition, the store that gave him permission to sleep behind it told him that he is only allowed to go there after 11PM (when it closes), meaning that he has to stay out until it is past dark before he is even allowed to sleep. I found out that he is part of my church’s homeless outreach program called “Love’s Kitchen”. I told him that I go to the same church, and asked him if he was a Christian. He said that he’s still a believer, and that he reads his Bible regularly, and that he prays every night before he goes to bed.
As the conversation came to a close, we prayed together. I asked him if I could help him in any way at all, even going out to buy him things, and he half-jokingly said another dollar would be nice. I told him I only have a five, and rather than accepting five more dollars, he traded it with me for the previous three I gave him. This was only a small act of humility, but one that was remarkable and went wildly contrary to my expectation. This kind of humility repeatedly brings to mind (despite reading it almost a year ago) a passage in Philippians 2:
6Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; 7rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. 8And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death– even death on a cross!
Jean’s story is truly inspiring in a revolutionary kind of way. Thirty years! For someone who only just turned 18, that’s very hard to conceptualize. That was more than half of his life! I’ve never met anyone who has been closer to really understanding the endurance that the israelites must’ve had in order to wander through the wilderness for forty years. I don’t know if many people could claim without hesitation that they would still be devout Christians after 30 years of homelessness. Jean had the kind of endurance that James and Paul referred to, and the kind of humility Jesus displayed. I think most of us could be a little more like Jean.
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