Last night a senior who is graduating this week got up to share about his experience at North Park. While here, he participated in our Friday Night Ministry - spending time with the homeless on Lower Wacker Drive. What he had to say about it was profound, I think.
He explained that he had had hopes for his homeless friends. He had wanted them to get off the streets, hold a job, have a family, own a house and a car. He had wanted them to be like him, and He prayed for them and with them, always with this in mind.
He told us, though, that God had shown him what a narrow view of hope this was. What he had prayed and what he had been looking for was not the hope of the gospel. It was the hope of man. He had been blinded to what God was already doing in the lives of his friends because he could not see past their drugs, poverty, and mental illnesses.
How often do I pray for people to be blessed like me? To have nice clothes, or a loving family. To live in a heated home and have a fridge full of food. I do not want to argue that those things are not good, but they are not the hope of the gospel. The gospel is not the American dream; it is Christ. Let us not forget that.
May you know the true hope of God this Christmas, and always.
Profound indeed. There are lonely people, homeless people, sick people and people who have to give up our babies far too soon but the gospel remains.......pure and true and steadfast....... because it is Christ.
ReplyDeleteSo what do you pray for them? And will we let them live like that and be a christian? Aren't all christians rich?
ReplyDeleteWell, I guess we pray for God to change their hearts rather than simply their circumstances. I think the point that he was making was that he was looking so hard for them to rise above their homelessness and poverty (and was so discouraged when they didn't or couldn't) that he neglected what God was doing inside of them. Yes we should still pray for them to heal and to become stable and work and live in a home, but those things won't actually save them.
ReplyDeleteNo we shouldn't let them live like that. And no not all Christians are rich. At least monetarily. But we are certainly rich in the love of Christ, and I think that is what we should desire for those people too.