love

I want to take advantage of my massive presence here on the world wide web to tell everyone about two people I met tonight at Starbucks. Starbucks lends itself to deep spiritual conversations (well, kinda) between me and my friend Stephen and God used our conversation tonight to introduce us to Will and his friend, who we were told to affectionately refer to as "Muscle Man"--if you saw him, you'd know why. Muscle man can do 30 push-ups with one hand, then switch over to the other for 30 more. Will is kind of lean and has curly hair and is a huge Elvis fan, and has side burns to prove it. Muscle Man is one of those guys that you never see without a hat on, to the point that you realize you have no idea what color or length of hair he has, and quite frankly, it would look weird to you no matter what it was if he ever took off his hat, which he won't. You probably know the kind. They are both from the great state of South Carolina, and Muscle Man has traveled all over the country (or the east part of it at least) doing who knows what. Both of them love God and love people, and Will actually spends his spare time selling and giving away roses to people in Columbia. Will's parents grew up and raised him in the church, his father was a deacon. Muscle Man comes from a not-so-religious family, but now talks to God every day.

By this time you're probably wondering what the point of all this is. "What makes these people so fascinating that you thought I might want to know about them, especially this much about them??" Well, nothing is extraordinary about them--they are basically no more interesting then most of the people we hang out with normally, with one difference. Neither one of them knew where they were going to sleep tonight. They are homeless.

There. Now I have ever-so-theatrically revealed the two main characters to you, let me show you how they connect to what Stephen and I were discussing the moment they walked up. We were basically talking about control. The question we were discussing was, at what point do you just let go of any goals, purposes, and agendas for Christ and just give it to God. The answer, for us at least, was "right now." Neither Will nor Muscle Man had had anything to eat in several days, so we took a trip to Church's, and acquired a massive helping of one of God's greatest gifts to earth (at least to the South)--fried chicken. After holding up traffic in the Church's drive through because Will suggested that we pray for the food before we got it, we laughed our freakin' heads off with these guys. I guess there's something about sleeping outside for several years that lends itself to having some pretty incredible/hilarious stories.

Then came the painful part, at least for Stephen and I. They took us to a place where they told us they could stay the night for $25 bucks a piece, and when we arrived there, it wasn't much. And by saying "it wasn't much," I mean it was nothing. Personally, I might have rather have slept outside than in this place. There was no power, I didn't really feel any heat, and there were boards on all the windows. Stephen and I suggested that they stay at one of our places or at a local shelter, but Will and M.M. both told us they had had enough of that, simply pointing out that when they stayed at other "Christian's" houses or at shelters, the people who let them stay always wanted them to do something--either pray, or accept Christ, or promise they would find a job. So Stephen and I coughed up fifty bucks for them to stay at a place that someone couldn't have PAID ME enough to stay at, wondering to ourselves if that money would eventually just be used for drugs or booze. As we started to talk about that ruin the high we had from laughing with these guys, Stephen got silent for a second and asked me this: "At what point do you just not care what they do with the money?"

And that's the question. Maybe the will take the money, go get coked up, and spend the night outside after all. We have all heard the advice about how to take a homeless guy to a restaurant, carefully pull money out instead of our wallet so they don't steal anything, take them to a homeless shelter ran by a local church so maybe they will hear about Jesus, and make sure not to give them any money because they will probably blow it on drugs. Maybe they will just take the money, go get coked up, and spend the night outside after all. But at some point you have to just say I'm out of control now. I think that sometimes we try to control and direct our generosity to the point that we are taking that control away from God. At what point do you just quit caring so much about controling what happens to them with your money and just give the situation to God? At what point do you cough up money that you could just tithe with and say "God I just want to give them this in hopes that they will see Christ in me, instead of a can of month old food served out a spoon?" At what point do you give them something you know they don't deserve and know they probably will abuse, not because you think they need it, and not because you want to feel good about yourself, but simply because God gave us something we never deserved and we abuse it every day?