PHOTO: Mary van Balen
What is good has been explained to you; this is what the Lord asks of you: only this, to act justly, to love tenderly and to walk humbly with your God.
Micah 6:8 Afternoon reading (None)
Most days, walking to the grocery means passing a beggar sitting at the top of the steps that lead to the metal walkway across the busy street. He is a young barefoot man with a scraggly goatee and dirty clothes. Sometimes he holds a throw away plastic cup. At other times he lays beside the cup and covers his face with his shirt. I don’t know whether it is a sign of humility, shame, or just an attempt to keep the bright sun off. I pass by making a mental note to keep some change in my hand on my walk back, but often I forget. Carrying plastic sacks of food, I walk past without adding to his daily take since unzipping my purse and rummaging through it to find coins or small bills is too awkward.
Poverty is all around this city. Families live in metal huts with no plumbing that sprout along alleys and streets behind store fronts and the plastic table and chair restaurants that spill out onto the sidewalks in the evening. Some street vendors have lovely carts refrigerated or piled with ice to keep fruits and meats cold. Some set up stands where they fry batter dipped bananas or bamboo and greens stuffed pastry. Others have little to sell and customers are few. How do they make a living? I wonder.
As I walk by the young man, I remember the anguish felt by my young children when we passed homeless people on the streets of Washington D.C. How could such a thing be possible, they asked? How could someone have no place to go?
Once, our youngest was upset as we exited the freeway and she saw a man standing by an off ramp holding a “Homeless” sign.
“What are we going to do?” she kept asking, until my husband stopped the car and got out along with our oldest daughter, walked to the man and gave him some money.
“That will help a little,” she said when they returned. “But what else will we do?”
Her question replays in my mind as I walk by the young man; when I see children peering out from dark doorways in crowded alleys. I think of our congress and cuts some are pushing to make in our national budget.
What does God call us to do?
The question remains:
“What can we do?”
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