answer: let them in to your home

Coffee Oasis has been getting good press in the paper. A little clip from my meeting with the city and county yesterday (I was actually filling in for my father because he does not like schmoozing): http://www.kitsapsun.com/news/2009/nov/17/advocates-call-for-a-safe-park-for-the-homeless/ . And another interview on the phone today about a large overnight gathering we are planning for homeless awareness Friday-Saturday. We have been meeting and talking non-stop. But there are still things that make you stop. Most of the time people are sleepers and talkers, dazed and moving. There is no moment like the moment that you finally and truly see. Like the shepherds watching their flocks in the fields at night when the angel came to them. "Behold I say to you...." And the rest is history. Beautiful history. Beautiful truth. The meeting I was speaking at yesterday had the goal of solving homelessness. The two best ideas that they came up with were safe places to park cars and legal tent cities. The last time I heard a car and a tent did not fall under the home category. I will tell you my idea. Let them into your home. Jesus said, "let the children come." Who is a child and who is your neighbor? Tonight the county bugle did not call for the emergency shelter so those that came seeking refuge from the cold were brought to home. My roommates are generous men and happily agreed to let two men stay at our apartment. We had pizza and talked late. Not like a slumber party. The stories we heard were to sad to be boyish fantasy and too real to be campfire tales. They are now sleeping in my living room. Full and thankful (I think). Now I will ask you honestly, what means more to a man: treating him with dignity or saying that he has dignity and doing nothing about it? G.K. Chesterton tells the story in his book "Orthodoxy" about the man of our age that goes from one meeting where he has taken pains to describe the special rights of humanity straight to another meeting of science where he tries to show in detail how humans are not different than roaming wild animals. We live in a society which is confused and without foundation. Wishing to believe in something substantial--to stand--but falling for through the gaping hole of courageous statements without absolute morality to defend them and a prayer for a better future with a belief that the universe is nothing but a large, silent, and dark chasm. There is hope in Jesus. He is the final Word. He created. And He came to redeem a people who will believe and stand upon the truth that He alone is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.