September 1st. My first unemployed day in nine years. You would think I’d be hyperventilating or something, but I feel good. I feel at peace. Especially if every day can be like today.
This morning after taking the boys to school I drove downtown and met with a few of the staff at Bread of Life, Inc., a nonprofit organization affiliated with St. John’s Downtown Church. I went there to begin my journey learning the reality of serving the homeless. Bread of Life is a 24-hour facility that aims at, and occasionally hits, the target of ending homelessness in Houston. Bread of Life opens its doors every afternoon at 4:00 to receive up to 150 men and women who can shower, do laundry, eat a meal cooked by other homeless people enrolled in their culinary school, escape the heat, play chess, receive career counseling and minor medical care, and sleep off the ground. At 7:00 a.m. breakfast is served, and at 8:00 they leave for the day to look for work or wander the streets.
I explained to one of the staff that I have experienced serving the homeless only from suburbia, from the comfort of knowing that no matter what I would return to my king-size bed in my two-storied house inside our gated community. I “served” fewer than five days a year and when I did it was superficial and many times fruitless. “I’m ready to see it for what it really is,” I told her. She laughed. Hard. “Oh, you’ll see it here,” she said.
So every Wednesday I have a standing volunteer commitment at Bread of Life and I’m really, really scar-cited – that’s a blend of scared and excited. Scared because I feel so inadequate, at a loss for what’s required of me. I feel out of place, like a foreigner visiting another country. I’m excited because I know those feelings won’t last long and soon being around the homeless will be my new normal. See? Scar-cited.
At the heart of all this is a very important conversation Christina and I had on the way home from Belton last weekend. We talked about our future, what we think about God, and what we think He might be doing in all this. It was an important conversation because it was an honest one – neither of us is fully convinced we really know what God’s love and leading feel like. We’re both desperate to know we are being led by a loving God who we can fall in love with too. One option is to wait around for God to send a Hallmark card or give us a big bear hug, but instead we’re going to step out and trust He’ll be there to catch us. If He isn’t, we’ll learn to listen to Him better next time.
The phrase we keep kicking around is, “We’re ready to jump.” We don’t want to test God, we want to let God know we trust Him. We trust His provision, we trust His grace, and we trust His perspective of the big, big, big picture. This trust, however, is 100% in our heads; we’re ready for it to be 100% experience.
This, too, is scary. To this point our life has been comfortable and, honestly, that’s part of the reason we’re so ready to jump. In a lot of ways I feel like I’ve been sitting on the couch all day watching Thundercats and eating Cheese Puffs. Is it comfortable? Yes. Is it awesome? Pretty much. Do you feel like crap at the end of the day? Of course. Being that comfortable only makes you fat and lazy, and that’s how I feel about my spiritual life. I’m ready to jump because it will require something more from me than the routine that has become so sterile. I’m ready to jump because it forces me to work, to exercise my spiritual muscle – specifically the muscles of trust and love – and although it will be hard, it will feel so great when the workout’s done.
I’m excited about seeing God flex His muscles. I want to see God work in ways that make us all say, “If not for God, that wouldn’t have happened.” I’m excited about learning to be led by the Holy Spirit and not by the latest trend or popular book (although if you want to know what I’m feeling, check out “Radical” by David Platt). I’m excited about seeing the Kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven.
Christina and I desperately need your prayers, and not in a “you’re in our prayers” sort of way, but we need people taking us before the King and humbly lifting us up. We appreciate everyone’s encouragement, everyone’s confidence, and everyone’s money (just kidding).
“But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ – the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith. I want to know Christ and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in His sufferings, becoming like Him in His death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.” -Philippians 3:7-12