“GET OUT” you hear as you stand alone at the end of the hallway. You stand there half confused, half shattered because you doubt what’s to come in your life as being anything close to pleasant. A few more words said to pack what you can handle and exit before the person you once loved begins to rip up the tile from the kitchen floor, building a wall between you and them. Anything to get you out of their life.
You take what you can, and hurry out to your car. Leaving behind the only life you’ve ever known. Shattered dreams are all that’s left to remember, but what’s to come is what you’ll never forget.
Dads deceased, Moms buried six feet deep into drugs and nobody else is known. You’ve been rejected and replaced with someone different; someone new. The very person you trusted your life with, threw you away like Sunday’s paper, leaving nothing but pain and regret.
Abandoned in a moment, Forgotten for a lifetime.
These days are now spent gazing out onto the open highway, squinting from the sun, praying for a bottle of water to quench your thirst. You started off with a crushed spirit but the hope, once high, is now dwindling down.
With every car passing by and every eye darting away at the sight of your wrinkly unwashed skin, you long for only the slightest bit of human connection. Maybe eye contact, or just a smile.
Anything to remind you of who you are.
The days are long and unforgiving. Searching for loving kindness is like searching for shelter on a cold rainy night. Your identity has become that man no one cares about and you get treated just the same.
Laying alone in the dark of night, and with every passing thought, your breathe begins to get shorter, it’s in that tearful moment that the realization comes to you…
You’ve lived ten years without hearing the words ‘I Love You’.
The heart of the world has grown cold. We look but we don’t see, we hear but we don’t listen. Somehow, this life has us so tangled up, that we can’t think for a moment to remember the broken lives paralyzed as if in a frame. We’re too busy caught up with our own ‘next big thing’ to see the ones who have nothing.
When will the day come that we choose to be the voice for the voiceless. When will we see each other as family instead of falling into the lies of division. It’s all too common now a days to fight for all that’s already lost. All over Instagram stories, people share aesthetic posts of climate change, animals going extinct and everything in between. So it’s clear people care for the Earth, but what about the people who inhabit it?
Our Glorious God gave us the very air we breathe in each breathe we take, he blessed us with the roof over our heads and made a way for jobs to graciously keep what has been given. There’s food on the table, a warm bed to sleep in and a family that loves you. And even if you don’t have a lot; that’s more than those who have nothing.
When we have what we have, how can you for another moment look at another homeless person, and after, gaze straight over their head, as if you don’t see them. I know we console ourselves with the notion that ‘somebody else will take care of them’ but if everyone has that thought, the homeless go hungry yet another day. Maybe you don’t have a lot of money, and honestly a lot of us don’t, but understand money isn’t the problem. It’s our hearts. 1 John 3:17 If someone has enough money to live well and sees a brother or sister in need but shows no compassion—how can God’s love be in that person? Our hearts should be bleeding with compassion for the people wandering on the streets who have lost everything. Love needs to be overflowing for the ones who have nothing. Ignoring someone’s hurt is obvious and brings more pain to the endurer. So see what is there and change what you will.
Jesus’ heart overflowed with passion for the poor, He showed His love and mercy through every way onto the poor and did so willingly. Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of Mine, you did for Me (Matthew 25:40 NIV). This is by far one of my favorite verses in the book of Matthew. It’s compelling, yet convicting and reveals God’s heart.
Just for a moment imagine yourself buying the 84c loaf of bread, $5 peanut butter and $2 jelly and $3 case of waters. Envision, spending ten minutes making sandwiches and putting them into baggies with the waters and maybe some snacks on the side. Maybe give out the bags with an encouraging message telling the homeless, God loves them and they are not forgotten. I guarantee you, you would make that beautiful, broken soul feel so loved and spark back the hope they thought was lost. Maybe then, throughout the ten years of life the homeless man believed no one loved him, he’d be set free of those lies and into the truth that God, rich is mercy has never left him nor forsaken him and has loved him all along.
When will what you imagined be brought to life?
Feel the hunger, through the belly and the bones. The moment we think our voice and resources don’t matter is the moment we fool ourselves. Show the forgotten you care because, regardless of what they have or lack of; they are just like you and I. Not greater, NOT less. Each and every one of them has a story: they are hurt, broken and bruised. Do what you would want to be done to you, out of the love of your heart.
Christ showed us how to live, there’s no excuse. If we all took heed to the life Jesus spoke into the Word, this world would be perfect; lacking nothing. But the world is broken, so it’s up to us to pick up the pieces and mend it back together, through Love.
Copyright © 2020 Sierra Aaron. All Rights Reserved.
The Light of Heaven 