Hide and Go Seek Blog

Walking into a fast food restaurant along one of the more trendy streets of Edmonton, Alberta I am caught off guard by a sight that I was simply unprepared for. It came without warning, yet maybe it did, but there in the entrance was someone’s home, the true definition of temporary. A sleeping bag lumped into a disorganized clutter, making it impossible to overcome without having to stare the stark reality of the truth of this message right in the face.

As the winter sweeps in on the city, the homeless that runs epidemic in this city is forced to manifest itself in an even more depressing, yet powerfully unforgettable way. The homeless are forced to come out of the shadows to find warm in fear of losing life. They watch the memories of their shattered lived dance in front of fires set in trash cans, do whatever possible to forget. Forget the past. Forget about the present. Stop thinking about the future. The mild tendency to stay forgotten is replaced by a desperation for staying alive.

At this point comfort is a foreign dream. They are driven by a need for the basics of life. Food. Water. Warmth. They are so desperate to stay alive that they have no problem getting into the comfort zones of those around them. There begging becomes for immediate. Their search for warmth lands them in places that they will surely be evicted from. There desperation leads them to do things no other human with all the comforts of home would ever dream of doing. The homeless are looked down upon in society, not only for their situation, but for the distance they are willing to go to get into our comfort zones—out of desperation—in order simply to live.

To be truthful, this desperation is inspiring. It reminds me of something Jesus once said. In Luke 9:58 “Jesus replied, “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.”” It reminds me that on this Earth, I have no home. Apart from my inheritance in Heaven, as a follower of Christ, there is no place on Earth I can home. On this planet, this side of ultimate grace, I am a homeless Christian. And what kind of desperation do I have for the basic needs of this Christian life. My need for water, when Jesus says to the Samaritan woman “”Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” (John 3:13-14). My need for food, when Jesus quotes Deuteronomy 8:3 “It is written: ‘Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’” (Matthew 4:4). What about warmth, when the writer of Hebrews, quoting Deuteronomy 4:24, proclaims that, “…since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, for our “God is a consuming fire.”

Where are my desperation for God gone? It’s been forgotten in the comfort that I have lackadaisically accepted inside of the gospel of convenience I have adopted. I may look better, be better paid for what I do, have more friends, come with more prestige, more precedence, I may even come in miracles, but I have lost my true effectiveness, because I have lost the gospel, and my first love (Revelation 2:4). A homeless man off the street would go up to another man and beg for a piece of bread to save his life, but I will not go up to another man, with my piece of Bread, in order to save his life.

, Chad