I used to be a resident of Florida for 8 years. While there, I used to surprise your vendors with the minimum of a twenty-dollar bill, a heart-felt smile and a word of God’s love. I surprised many of them with more when I could! I enjoyed the look on their faces and I loved reading the paper and miss it.
God bless you and your work. I just read your letter to the churches explaining the mission of the Homeless Voice and that your organization is legitimate despite what varied and numbered critics say.
Thank you for teaching men to fish instead of feeding them for a day. I had to chuckle at the scripture the pastor wrote down unknowingly about himself over what things the Lord hates not knowing who you were or where he was when he sought your aid while he was lying about you to your own face! Such bittersweet irony can only be ordained by the Lord Himself!
Let us not forget that over 2000 years ago, a teacher sat among prostitutes, thieves and murderers. He came to save the unsaved. May God bless you in your ministry no matter what the naysayers and spreaders of lies may state.
Your rewards and crowns certainly await you in heaven. Empathy’s congruence with caring for others are independent yet mutually supportive fruits from God while bearing false witness isn’t. "If you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness, and your night will become like the noonday." Isaiah 58:10
The picture in your paper of Jesus saying, “Will work for loaves and fishes” captured my heart and inspired the attached poem, which focuses on homelessness not being a crime from a Divine perspective but that thoughtlessness is. I’d like to know who the artist is so I may gain permission to use it for an upcoming book.
You’ve never met me but your paper changed my life in a grand and profound way. I stopped at an intersection to buy a paper. This man I wasted too many years of my life with nearly foamed at the mouth in protest of giving one red cent let alone a twenty.
Those memorable, UGLY veins were sticking out of the sides of his forehead (like they did when he balanced the checkbook over a ten cent difference) and he started spewing that such people deserve their fates and other false, filthy lucre.
What was amazing to me is this man was worth dozens of millions! I knew in that very moment we were done. D-O-N-E, done. Such prevailing mentality goes against everything I treasure. Needless to say, in defiance, I dug deeper into my wallet and gave your vendor two twenty’s and respectively walked—no, ran away from that relationship. End of story. I owe you and your vendor a great and humble word of thanksgiving!
The following bible verse immediately came to my mind that night, “Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked.” Revelation 3:17
Revelation 3:18 then goes on to say (may it be of comfort to your homeless),” I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and anoint thine eyes with eyesalve, that thou mayest see”. The homeless have been tried by fire; this life is but a few days and a moment compared to eternity and I pray their sight goes beyond present circumstances. Faint not!
At the Bema Seat of Christ or at the White Throne Judgment, every knee will bow and have to give an account of how they spent their time and treasures. Every knee-- the rich, the middle class, the poor and the homeless will give an account! No one is exempt---there are only two classes of another kind there, with upper and lower having a great chasm fixed, FOREVER!
Take heed unregenerate hearts, for true riches are to be bled in the hour of truth.
Seneca wrote, “It is another's fault if he be ungrateful, but it is mine if I do not give. To find one thankful man, I will oblige a great many that are not so.” This holds a two-fold lesson.
Lesson One: There are many people able to work who ruin desperately needed aid for the ones that are temporarily smitten. There are many who are not thankful for assistance upward; they expect a parental government to pay for sloth as a way of life from cradle to coffin; which is stealing from the workingman in every tax bracket AND stealing from God!
Unless they are disabled for life, the bible states if an able man will not work then he should not eat. There are those who are truly thankful, realizing the owed responsibility of repaying their debt fully by paying forward in doing great things for others, thus passing the gift on and on. Then there are the ones who physically steal and maim and kill innocents for a mere five spot without pre or afterthought devoid of all moral conscious.
Lesson Two: On the other hand there are many wealthy people who are the kindest and most generous people who prove it in charitable giving. I tire of stories where certain poor people act as spoiled, angry, irresponsible children with overblown senses of infantile entitlement demanding compensation for what they did not earn.
They rebel against their adult responsibilities for themselves while going against God’s rules and those of society which dictate eventual transition into adulthood. These same people bemoan and regard all the rich as evil and greedy because it’s easier than looking inward. Most often, the rich man puts in 70-hour weeks for 40 plus years. Why should he be forced to give the fruits of his labor to the lazy thieves instead of choosing the truly suffering and striving?
Money does not change men; it reveals them-- on both ends. It either makes you more generous or it makes you greedier or it makes you steal. Money (or the lack thereof) is the root of all evil. It wasn’t written only for those who have an abundance who are hoarding their gifts given by God, who watch unaffected the suffering of a hungry man not even offering a mere crumb from their lavish tables; it was also written for the slothful thieves who steal for the lack of it instead of actually working for it! Both are considered to be thieves stealing from God, by God.
The Bible says to help Christians first. I take that to mean those who adhere to the commandment, “Thou shall not steal.” There wasn’t a clause in there as to what kind of stealing is acceptable (the need or the greed) for all thieveries are an abomination! Being able to work and not doing so is stealing.
If they only knew-- that they are also robbing themselves of eternity in heaven and pawning it for hell! Let’s not omit the other real and valid truth-- that if only some of the rich knew that being uncharitable, self-righteous and elitist will end in a similar fate, then the here and now along with the hereafter would be a much nicer place to be.
In the end, God Himself will judge sloth and greed for He is not mocked. Those on either end of the spectrum may think their crimes are not known but He knows them. Woe to them who are weighed in the balance and are found wanting! Whether it’s white or blue-collar crime matters little.
There is never any circumstance on Wall Street or Main Street in which either will ever be condoned. And it is because of thieves on both sides of the street that the middle class is quickly disappearing into the great divide we see on the news daily. I don’t know which side of the tracks the thief on the cross next to Jesus was from but would he have been forgiven had he continued to steal knowing it was wrong?
Your organization sets you apart from others in the way your residents work by selling the paper and that the government does not fund it. These statutes are unapologetically Christian so don’t let the uninformed and assuming give you one moment of pause. Please know if I were to win the lottery I’d share it with you!
The way the economy is headed with all the foreclosures, there is sure to be many people who will soon become homeless. Some of them will be the very ones who disgustingly condemned the homeless themselves; maybe even spit in their faces. I beg of all true Christians to treat them the way you would want to be treated and lead them to Jesus; for if they had Jesus in them they would not have formerly condemned the ones who fell by no fault of their own.
And if it was their fault, that Jesus forgives and rebuilds for those who help themselves. Many will be forced to walk in your shoes and I pray you treat them with empathy (better than they treated you) to show yourselves approved unto God—for if you don’t—are you not the same? Sometimes we suffer to learn empathy enabling us to reach out to the lost. Let your suffering be not in vain; use it for the good in the Great Commission. Christians are salt and light not looking to repay injustice with injustice or evil with evil.
The apostle Paul had it right in learning the great secret; to be content in whatever circumstance, knowing how to get along by humble means and knowing how to live in prosperity. In every, and any circumstance he said, “I can do all things in Christ who strengthens me.”
“I was down because I had no shoes until I met a man who had no feet.” My grandmother told me this saying and it has been a lasting compass throughout my life. There is always someone, somewhere much worse off than you are-- especially those without Christ! Money will not buy any man salvation or true class. So take comfort all the Christian homeless, you are already ahead of the game in true and lasting riches!
Sean, I loved how you treated the pastor who bore false witness against your good works with compassion and the gift of helps regardless of circumstance. It was truly the stance of a Christian and I pray you will be blessed for your longsuffering.
I’m glad a life sentence was found in the Norris Gaynor trial. Prison on earth temporarily is but a mere shadow of hell for the unrepentant in eternity. I was so unbelievably horrified and shocked that anyone could have committed this most vicious crime for mere sport. My heart bleeds with Jesus; it just drips with red sweat. The moral decline of man is astounding and pervasive both in this life and in the one to come!
Similarly, “Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are they which hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled. Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.” Matthew 5: 3-7.
Amen and Amen.
Post Script (emphasis added mine):
To the unmerciful rich: It’s interesting to note the above words of Jesus—that ONLY the merciful will obtain mercy by the One True God, the Almighty everlasting Judge of judges and King of kings. The way you judge another is exactly how He will judge you!
To the slothful: Luke 13:7-9 says, “I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree without finding any. Cut it down! Why does it even use up the ground?' he answered and said to him, 'Let it alone, sir, for this year too, until I dig around it and put in fertilizer; and if it bears fruit next year, fine; but if not, cut it down.'"
Olga Mancuso is a Christian writer and poet. She can be reached at Olga.Mancuso@hotmail.com for comments, hire or reprint permission. Copyright © 2008.The following portion is by an anonymous author fitting each before mentioned eternal class. Read it and smile or read it and weep.
A holy man was having a conversation with the Lord one day and said, “Lord, I would like to know what Heaven and Hell are like.”
The Lord led the holy man through two doors. He opened one of the doors and the holy man looked in. In the middle of the room was a large round table. In the middle of the table was a large pot of stew, which smelled delicious and made the holy man’s mouth water.
The people sitting around the table were thin and sickly. They appeared to be famished. They were holding spoons with very long handles that were strapped to their arms and each found it possible to reach into the pot of stew and take a spoonful. But because the handle was longer than their arms, they could not get the spoons back into their mouths.
The holy man shuddered at the sight of their misery and suffering.
The Lord said, “You have seen Hell.”
They went to the next room and opened the door. It was exactly the same as the first one. There was the large round table with the large pot of stew that made the holy man’s mouth water.
The people were equipped with the same long-handed spoons, but here the people were well nourished and plump, laughing and talking. The holy man said, “I don’t understand!”
“It is simple,” said the Lord. “It requires but one skill. You see, they have learned to feed each other while the greedy think only of themselves.”