Saturday am with the Homeless

This morning I was invited to speak at a downtown Phoenix ministry to the homeless. Every other Saturday or so, Mama Jo organizes local volunteers to come downtown and help feed the homeless. Mama Jo is in her 70's. She's a spitfire. She's passionate about Jesus and passionate about bringing his love to the homeless in tangible ways. Various congregations participate, including volunteers from Grace. They pay for, bring, make, and serve the food while a group sings some worship choruses and one or two people share the Gospel through a message.

I had been there years ago to help serve. It was an honor to be able to preach for a few moments this time around. The preaching takes place as the people are being served their food. Right before I started to talk Mama Jo took the mic and said, "We have a special preacher here today. So you need to be quiet and listen to him. If you don't, I'm going to take your names and spank you after the service!" They love her enough and she loves them enough for her to talk that way.

I promised them that if they'd listen, I'd keep it short. So I told them a modified version of the Les Misearbles story of Jean Valjean. Again, the volunteers are serving the meal as I'm speaking so at first it was pretty noisy. But very quickly it grew very quiet, one of those things a speaker subconsciously notices. It's often a cue that people are listening in, that God is up to something. Usually a message has one or two of those points. But in this case, it happened quickly. Internally I thought to myself, "Wow, they're really into this story." Then it hit me. "Oh, they all just got their meals and are busy eating!"

So much for my brilliant oratory skills!

Afterward a young man introduced himself to me. His name is John. John is from the Sudan. He was granted asylum here 4 days ago. He's staying in a shelter for a few days while he gets his paper work in order. He wanted me to know he is a Christian and was anxious to connect with a local church. Mama Jo set him up with one.

A big "atta-grace" to all of the volunteers and especially to Mama Jo who give of themselves to images of God who have had that image battered, bruised, dirtied, and crumpled, sometimes through their own choices, sometimes through life's circumstances. They give these images of God a taste--literally and figuratively--of how God really sees them.