Why is it, that when I ask God to teach me something, I’m always surprised when he does?
Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about Matthew 25. You know, the infamous ‘sheep and goats’ passage? It was back in October that I really became…I don’t know…convicted about it. I realized that as Christians we are called to serve the least of these, and not doing so leads to some pretty harsh consequences. The Bible lays out pretty clearly who the ‘least of these’ are: the hungry, thirsty, homeless, cold, sick and imprisoned. It also classifies the needy pretty clearly: widows, orphans and strangers. You really can’t say, ‘I didn’t know who they were.’ So, I’ve been challenging myself this whole year to do stuff that falls into the category of ‘helping the least of these,’ but lately I’ve really been asking God to show me new ways to go about doing this. It’s felt like I could be doing more or doing something differently. Well, Tuesday is apparently my school day.
I start off Tuesdays at the Newington Day Centre. Not my cup of tea, by any stretch. Working with the elderly is a huge challenge for me and I think might actually fall behind ‘teach kindergarten’ in the list of possible career ideas. (This is very low on the list. It’s above ‘poll dancer’ but not by a whole lot.) I spent the first part of this year trying to get out of going to the NDC. I offered other ideas; I told Lesley, Chris and Doug that I was uncomfortable to the point of near-panic attacks; I cried when I had to go. But alas, I have remained. And it’s actually turned out to be not so bad. I’ve found some members there that I can talk to, and the other volunteers are great. I still spend most of my time in the kitchen as opposed to the members’ rooms, but I can at least breathe easy while I’m there.
Today, one of the ladies I’ve gotten to know a little bit arrived early. Mary’s stooped and tiny and shuffles around in her slippers holding her walker in a death grip, but she’s also lucid and can carry on a conversation (sadly, unlike a lot of the members.) She’s also an amazingly chipper 92 years old, which I found out today when I went to talk to her. I have never, before this morning, purposefully gone to sit and chat with one of the members, but when I saw her I just felt like saying more than my normal hello. So we chatted about her son, her late husband, her walker, her age, my own grandparents… It suddenly occurred to me that here was someone who fell into one of the ‘least of these’ categories: a lonely widow. And it wasn’t that hard to make her happy. She’s a 92-year-old woman who lives alone; of course she loves to talk!
After work at the NDC, I came home to get some other work done. I read my book a bit, prepped tomorrow’s Bible study, and just generally enjoyed the day. Chris called in about 4.00 to lift me so that we could go hang out in Tiger’s Bay, the local Unionist housing estate and home to the Youth Club kids. To be perfectly honest, I didn’t want to go. I had told Chris before that I did, but today I just didn’t feel like it. The kids usually ‘do my head in’ (read: drive me crazy) and I just wasn’t feeling up for it. But I went anyway. We saw a bunch of kids that are normally out, and we even ran into some we hadn’t seen in a while. We ended up spending some time with a group of boys at the estate’s bonfire pile (more on that after July 12) and talking to them about cross-community activities. One boy in particular, who we hadn’t seen in months, was there. He’s an interesting person; when he’s on his game he’s a pleasure to be around. When he’s not, he’s an absolute nightmare. Today he was great; he held us in conversation, he asked how we were. When some of the other boys—his peers—started lamenting all the cross-community activities (read: Catholic and Protestant) as being boring or simply unbearable due to the nature of the people involved, this boy spoke up; ‘I don’t think it’s that bad. I don’t mind Catholics.’ I couldn’t believe it. It was obvious this was his own opinion and not just some rhetoric he was regurgitating, otherwise he wouldn’t have contradicted his peers on the subject. Amazing. All of a sudden it struck me: category number 2. This kid’s not an orphan exactly, but he does come from one of the most dysfunctional families I’ve ever heard of. The fact that he’s in school and seems functional in society is a pretty big leap; the fact that he willingly admits that he doesn’t mind Catholics in front of his friends in the middle of a staunchly Protestant housing estate is nothing short of divine. All he needed was someone to talk to; someone to show they were interested in his life. Huh. That wasn’t so hard either.
Once Chris dropped me off and we critiqued the acts on ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ over a cup of coffee, Nate pointed out two bags in the hallway full of food for Beautiful Feet, the homeless ministry I sometimes work with. Groan. I hadn’t planned on going, I knew Phen wasn’t going to be able to go, and I couldn’t get in touch with any of the other regulars. And Jonny didn’t even ask, he just dropped the food off and assumed we would take it. To top it all off, I had no cash and no money on my bus pass. Phen offered me his, so I begrudgingly took it figuring I would drop off the food, say hello and then go home. I realized half way to our meeting spot that God was probably trying to teach me something. (I’m getting quick!) I arrived at the café we use as ‘base camp’ a little after 7.00 to discover that it was, in fact, closed. No one was about and I had no idea where a different meeting location might be. I pulled out my phone to call Jonny, discovered I had missed a call from him, and rang him back only to have it go straight to voice mail. At this point, I decided I had two choices: 1) return home with the food and try to pawn off 10 egg-n-onion sandwiches on the boys (not good) or 2) find some agency to take the food. Option 2 seemed like the best and most productive, so I decided to take it to the Salvation Army shelter. On my way, I figured I could go by the convenience store where we usually see people begging for change and see if my friend Robert was about. Well, Robert wasn’t out, but there were two other people there, one of whom was a woman. It’s highly unusual to see women out begging on the streets. Even when the groups from Beautiful Feet go out we try to have at least one guy in each group just for security; some of the people we meet are drunk and belligerent. I was very aware of the fact that I was a lone woman carrying a Christian Aid bag full of sandwiches and crisps around City Centre Belfast, but fortunately it was still light out, and there were women to talk to.
As I approached the two sitting by the convenience shop door, they seemed a little wary. I just smiled, crouched down and offered them a big ‘Hi! How are you?’ (I always feel stupid asking the homeless ‘How are you?’ but I haven’t come up with any other salutation that sounds less stupid, plus ‘How are you?’ doesn’t really mean ‘How are you?’ so I guess I’m okay.) They said they were fine. I said, ‘I’ve got a load of sandwiches and crisps here. You want anything?’ Their eyes immediately lit up. ‘Yes, please! We’re starving!’ (And I think they might have actually meant ‘starving.’) I gave them 2 sandwiches apiece and asked if they knew if any more people were out. They said yes and pointed me in the right direction.
I started off towards the street they indicated and met 3 more people, again one of whom was a woman. I offered each of them a sandwich and a bag of crisps, along with a smile and a handshake, and then went on my way. I didn’t actually find anyone on the street that my first friends had told me about, but I checked an alley where people sometimes hang out, and again met 3 more people, one a woman. They were more than happy to take the rest of the sandwiches and crisps off my hands. One of them, Michael, asked me, ‘Are you a Christian?’ ‘Yeah,’ I replied. ‘Well, I try to be, anyway.’ ‘That’s cool,’ he said. And it dawned on me; category number three: strangers. Maybe not strangers to Belfast, but some of them were strangers to being homeless (one of the women told me she had just been ‘evicted’ from her house by the reigning paramilitary) and all were strangers to me.
Now out of sandwiches and crisps, I meandered on to my bus stop. While there, an older man struck up a conversation with me. He repeatedly pulled a ‘tall boy’ beer from his inner jacket pocket and would take healthy swigs between sentences, but all in all was quite nice and jovial and seemed to just want someone to talk to. He was by no means the drunkest person I’ve ever talked to in City Centre, and he was perfectly civil (and I was not alone at the bus stop, lest my mother and grandmother worry.) It was actually quite nice.
I realized on the bus trip home that this whole day had been one big lesson from an Almighty teacher, and I was feeling pretty good about the lesson. First of all, it’s not about me or my comfort zone. Besides, God’s not going to ask me to do anything he wouldn’t be willing to do himself (or hasn’t already done) and anything he wouldn’t qualify me to do. Second, the ‘least of these’ are all around, I just have to open my eyes to them. Third, caring for the ‘least of these’ is not that hard. Smiling to someone, talking to someone, offering someone a sandwich; none of it’s rocket science. It was almost as though God was saying, ‘Just do what you do. I’ll work through that.’ Right. Lesson learned.
