Why the Homeless??? The question that continues to plague us...

This past Monday we held the Why the Homeless forum @ Quest. It was a great turn out, a great dialogue and a good start to what I hope to be a challenge for us as a church to care for the homeless.

The evening started off with a question, "Can we live into a more compassionate humanity"? After years and years of seeing the homeless be undervalued, stigmatized and dismissed I really wonder when we will begin seeing people with value and purpose simply because we believe they matter in the here & now. I wonder if we can reflect to the homeless a sense of dignity and the truth that they too are created in God's image with value and integrity. As I grow older, sometimes I lose a sense of that hope. I easily can fall prey to all sorts of cynicism, because it just seems like such a mountain to climb.

On Tuesday, I came into work when a woman I've worked with for years asked to see me. Upon approaching her I saw that she had a leg brace on both legs and a walker. I immediately asked what had happened when she shared that on February 24th sometime in the early morning she had been standing on a sidewalk when she became victim to a hit & run. She was just released from the hospital on March 16th and to make matters worse, the authorities who took the report, as well as the paramedics did not pass along her belongings to the hospital so now she has no identification-- all important paperwork that she owns is gone.

I don't know what that conjures up in you when you read that, but for me I connect with anger. How is it that someone could leave an accident not knowing whether or not the person that they hit was alive or dead? How is it that there wasn't more care taken in making sure that everything this person owned gets to her once she arrives at the hospital? How is that she is released, not fully recovered, to stay in shelter for the night but made to wander the streets by day in her condition? One injustice after the next...

I am working with her to try to get her ID back, but so far there hasn't been a lot of help from the police or fire departments. There isn't much urgency for a homeless woman. And this is what I mean by, "When will we live into a more compassionate humanity"? This reality-- where a person is valued and made a priority simply because they are human and share the same thread of the human experience that we all do. Imagine the healing, image the hurdles we could cross if we just cared-- if we left our anesthetized state, to really see another human being and care. I truly wonder these things. I truly wonder if looking at ourselves in this way could have made a difference for this woman.