We all spend so much time in our daily life worrying about this and that or scurrying here and there.  All the while the single greatest command God gave is “Love one another”…..I spent time tonight experiencing an Immersion into the city with three incredible youth from our church.  The assignment…we were given $8 and a mass transit pass total for the four of us to eat and get around a specific neighborhood.  We were to find dinner somehow some way and as we walked through the neighborhood we were encouraged to talk with people to learn about the city.  Tonight we didn’t necessarily “follow” the path suggested for us and because of that the holy spirit was able to guide us and lead us to a woman I will call Mary.

We encountered Mary sitting on a camp chair on the sidewalk in the middle of an affluent neighborhood…..we stopped and talked to her about the city and how things have changed in her life.   She told us she has been homeless since the war ended, which war we don’t know.  She explained how she had been beaten by people in order to steal her things and her food.  She told us about her friends in the neighborhood and she even told us what areas of the city to avoid for our safety!  Imagine a woman who has been living on the streets and suffering worried about our safety.  We should all consider being so generous.  The youth had decided that we should find some food and share our meal with Mary.  Again, we had $8 to buy our meal.  The only place we found was a drug store and for a total of $6.91 we bought a package of buns, a packet of deli turkey meat, a 2-liter bottle of ginger ale (Mary’s request) and a large bag of chips.  We returned to Mary.  The four of us each had a bun with some turkey on it and everything else, including more buns and turkey we gave to Mary.  We asked her if she would pray with us and she agreed and provided the names of others we should include in our prayer.   Eventually we needed to be returning from our assignment so we said goodbye to Mary and began the journey back.

Through our entire time with Mary the one thing I can’t get out of my mind is the reactions and facial expressions of the hundreds of people passing by while we spent our time chatting and eating with Mary.  So many of them looked so surprised or shocked and how sad is that…..it makes me realize we all need to do a better job of opening the eyes of our hearts to the people in our world that need our help, myself included.  We can’t help them all but our little group spent a wonderful evening talking and sharing a meal with a woman that the world around her has no idea even exists.  Help us Lord, help us see the Mary’s of our broken world.

Peace.