8 Dollar Bed

My boyfriend read this to me - something a friend of his (Jake Nyberg) wrote and I thought it might be a bit of a thought provoker...

Tonight I saw Brian Setzer's Christmas show at the State in Minneapolis. November 16th a bit early for a Christmas show, you say? Perhaps, but there were signs all over the city that winter had indeed set in. The visible breath of pedestrians, the blinking "11" on the TCF time & temp sign and the holiday decorations in the windows of Target (okay, so perhaps those have been up since August) all pointed to a shift in the seasons.

There was one more sign, though, that the winds of winter had indeed blown in.

As my friend and I stood outside the State, listening to a man play bop tunes on his saxophone for loose change, we were approached by another man who was clutching tightly to a folded-up blanket. The man's tired eyes peeked up at us from beneath the edge of an old stocking hat, his unkempt moustache covered in frozen snot.

"Um, ex-excuse me sir, I was wondering if y-you got a f-few bucks man..."

His speech was slurred slightly, but then again, so was mine... after all, it was damn cold outside. I asked him what was up and he explained that he needed eight dollars to get a bed at Harbor Lights, a Salvation Army shelter two blocks away from the State. He continued,

"It's... I mean... I mean it's cold, man. It's real cold."

My friend and I reached into our wallets and gathered $10 for the man. I offered him the rest of my tea and he nodded, quickly raising the half-empty cup to his mouth and drinking it down. I wished him good luck, as I knew he was about to go wait to see if he would be one of the winners in the bed lottery at Harbor Lights. As hard as it is for homeless women and children to get beds in this town, it’s even harder for single men.

As we turned from the man and walked into the theater, a few thoughts hit me that I have struggled with since. The first was a sense of pride about "what we had just done" for that man. This "good feeling" about having helped someone "less fortunate" than you is completely natural... but I believe that it only stems from the second feeling I had, which was guilt. I often feel insanely guilty and rather hypocritical when I claim to worship a homeless man on Sunday and then ignore them by the dozens the rest of my week.

"But I can't possibly help EVERY homeless person I see," I tell myself, "besides, most of them would just use the money for..."

And there it was. The lie that has been planted and cultivated in me and a lot of other well-meaning followers of Jesus. I don't mean the lie that a homeless person might well be an addict - sadly, many are (then again, so are many white collar suburbanites as well)—but rather, the lie that what a beggar (someone who has become so desperate that they are willing to accept certain humiliation, ridicule and even punishment in order to survive) does with the money I give is of any concern to me as one who attempts to live by a radical, grace-soaked creed of love for my neighbor.

You see, the lie says, "well, they might spend it on booze," but Jesus says, "give to those that ask of you." Period. There were no disclaimers, no caveats about making sure they had an expense breakdown for the crumpled-up dollar you tossed into their hat as you walked by with eyes averted. No, Jesus asked his followers to give in the way his father gave - recklessly and without distinction.

It is by this sort of grace - this sort of radical love - that we are called to live. After all, did god ask us what we were going to do with god's grace before lavishing it upon us? It is through the reckless, life-invading grace of a creator that IS love that we come to understand a little about God here and there, and perhaps the key is that our creator came close to us in Jesus.

Tossing a dollar (or ten) in the direction of a homeless man is one thing. Skipping a concert and taking that man to dinner would have been an entirely different matter. Why didn't I do that? Perhaps it was because I didn't want to miss a hot rockabilly rendition of "Here Comes Santa Claus." More than likely, though, I let the man go because to talk with him over dinner would have been to stare into the face of Jesus and I, like most Christians, am simply not ready for that close of an encounter with a savior who calls me to lose my life in order to find it.

A heart cannot be bought. It must be broken... little, by little.

Thank you, Lord.

So what do we think in these situations? What do we do when faced with somone asking for money like this?