"It been a hard couple months..." "Then I got kicked out of there...then I got kicked out of there...sometimes you don't feel wanted." "Is this the men's shelter? Boy finally a stroke of luck in an unlucky day!" This is the men's shelter...and women's shelter....and....
Tonight I am staffing the Severe Weather Shelter at the Coffee Oasis. Last night the wind was blowing the rain sideways so it hit standing objects like a target. You could hear it from my side of the apartment pounding the wall as if it was slowly working its way through the wood and insulation. So today the call went out and we are open. Out of the three shelters in Kitsap County we are the only one that has been able to raise the staff needed to be open. As I type there are three sleeping soundly on the floor the game room in the back-end of the Oasis. When they came in we welcomed them and served them hot chocolate and told them that we are glad they came. We are. They have been told a lot of thing--called a lot of things. They have felt unwanted and tonight they are wanted. The two that came early watched the last of the Lord of the Rings trilogy on VHS. After the four hobbits have returned to the shire Frodo finished his uncle Bilbo's story, "There and Back Again." In the movie he finishes the book with these words: "There is a deep that is hard to understand, a wound that time does not heal." They have been deepened by the whole experience and do not rush back into the merry, green life of the shire. These are wounded people. It changes the way you see the world to hand three rough, gray wool blankets for three souls to sleep on blue camping pads on a thin brown rug in the back room of a coffee shop. At the part of the movie when King Aragorn tells the four hobbits, "you bow to no one," it made tears come to the eyes of one of the men. "I like that. I really like that," he told me. I believe that time alone cannot heal wounds. It can surround it with hard and stiff tissue, but it cannot heal. Have you ever seen an old veteran with a stiff wound? It is a plague in later years. I believe Jesus can heal those wounds. He can make new. There is also a deep in me that I find hard to express to any living soul. He knows that to. I am known. It is good to be known. There is much to fear if I am known by anyone that does not love me and will not endure with me. I believe Jesus does love me and will endure with me to the end. I believe Jesus is offering the same to you and these three sleeping in the next room. But he wants a true bride. He wants a bride in love with him. What other kind of bride would a bridegroom desire? Am I a pure bride?
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