I posted the prayer I prayed on my way home from last night’s NightWatch. One of my prayers was for “my friend who sleeps at Grace who’s moving into housing and who needs to be encouraged.” Today, he sent me an email and asked me to forward it to the director of the housing program.
The email begins like this:
“I guess it helped with Michele praying that things would go easier for me today, because everything went through like a breeze.”
Hear this, my friends: God is good. He answers prayers. In the past few days I have been so acutely aware of the overwhelming and all-consuming needs of my homeless friends and of my absolute inadequacy and insufficiency to meet those needs. And time after time after time, as I cried out, “Lord, I can’t do this, but I know You can,” He has answered right on time, He has made a way, He has shown His great love and faithfulness, He has glorified Himself, He has met the need.
“My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.” — 2 Corinthians 12:9
“I would have lost heart, unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living. Wait on the LORD; be of good courage, and He shall strengthen your heart; wait, I say, on the LORD!” — Psalm 27:13-14
The Salvation Army of Greensboro's winter shelter closes until next year.
The cold weather shelter programs at both homeless shelters ended yesterday, and Greensboro Urban Ministry Executive Director Mike Aiken and Salvation Army Major Paul Egan say they won’t reopen before next winter unless the weather becomes life-threatening. Salvation Army was providing emergency shelter for about 40-50 people, and Greensboro Urban Ministry’s overnight shelter was sheltering dozens more. Those 80 or more homeless people are now back on the street. Where are they sleeping?
A homeless man sleeps outside Greensboro Urban Ministry.
The NightWatch team found that the group of homeless people who met us in the parking lot of Grace Community Church had more than doubled from last week. The efforts of Grace’s outreach staff and the Family Service of the Piedmont housing support team had decreased the numbers of folks sleeping outside at Grace from more than a dozen regulars last summer down to an average of three recently, at least one of whom will be moving into permanent housing this week, but with the closing of the winter shelters, we saw a new group of faces at Grace on this night.
Erik put a blanket on the man sleeping outside the shelter.
When we got to one of the big bridges downtown, we found that the number there had doubled, as well. Our friend JM, who has the spot nearest the path, announced that “the bridge is full.” There were men sleeping in every available space underneath the bridge. The spaces between the bridge’s support beams are just wide enough to hold a mattress, and all of the mattresses were occupied.
But the hardest thing for me came later in the night, when we went to check the parking lot of Greensboro Urban Ministry before going home for the night, and we found at least a half dozen people sleeping there, some of them on the concrete right outside the doors of the shelter — including a woman. As I knelt down to speak to them, feeling helpless and trying to think of what in the world I could say, one of the men locked eyes with me and softly said, “It’s just inhumane.” His eyes welled up and he turned away. I put my head down and prayed, “God, please help me…” I felt sick. Words were inadequate.
I thought of Mike Aiken, the director of that shelter, who is involved in every effort that I know about to end homelessness. I thought of my earlier conversation with Jackie Lucas, the director of the Salvation Army shelter, who told me that she’d been able to move five people into transitional housing before winter shelter closed. She’s also involved in efforts to end homelessness, and she’s always looking for new ways to stretch limited resources to better serve homeless people. I know and love Mike and Jackie, and I’m thankful for their service and commitment to serve and show God’s love to homeless people. And I also realize that neither has the space, the staff or the funding to shelter everyone.
And then I looked back to the face of the man in front of me — a kind, intelligent, dignified and weary survivor, who is trying to get his life together — and I hurt for him. He told me that he’d lost his job and just recently found a new one, but he hadn’t gotten his first paycheck yet. He was struggling. “It’s like Job,” he said, and there was both resignation and determination in his voice.
He continued on, telling me that he knew that it was going to be alright, that his trust was in God. I reached for his hand, and asked if I could pray for him. When he nodded, I began, “God, I know You’re here with us,” and beside me, he said, “Yes, You are.” His voice was firm and strong and the intimacy with which he spoke to his God was unmistakable. I did not feel strong. I felt small and inadequate and humbled by the strength of the faith of this man, steadfastly trusting the Lord even as he spent the night on the hard concrete outside the closed doors of a homeless shelter.
On the drive home, I prayed out loud for the man of faith to be rewarded, for this to be the year that JM finally leaves the bridge and gets a home, for my friend who sleeps at Grace who’s moving into housing and who needs to be encouraged [prayer answered], for a homeless friend who has found his voice and is using it to advocate for others, for L whose heart is beautiful even though he doesn’t realize it yet, for V who is a precious princess, for all my friends who need a home and hope and a new start, for my friends who work tirelessly to provide shelter and housing but can’t do it all and who need to be free from the burden of thinking that they have to, for my friends who serve on the street, for the Church and the community to have the eyes and the heart to see the needs of their homeless brothers and sisters and to respond, and for God to give me faith, wisdom, and strength to serve in love, and grace, mercy and forgiveness for my many failures and shortcomings.
I soon learned that hours before I prayed that prayer, God had already begun to answer me, by sending His word to me through a friend. When I got home from NightWatch, I saw that Jordan Green had posted this on my Facebook:
Thought of you when I read this:
“Yet we who have this spiritual treasure are like common clay pots, in order to show that the supreme power belongs to God, not to us. We are often troubled, but not crushed; sometimes in doubt, but never in despair, there are many enemies, but we are never without a friend; and though badly hurt at times, we are not destroyed. At all times we carry in our mortal bodies the death of Jesus, so that his life also may be seen in our bodies.” ~ 2 Chronicles 4:7-10
The Homeless Prevention Coalition of Guilford County has released final numbers from the January 2008 point in time count of the homeless. But the totals counted don’t tell the whole story.
According to the official count, there are 101 chronically homeless adults in all of Guilford County, 89 homeless people with serious mental illness, and 22 with HIV/AIDS. No way. Not even if you were just counting Greensboro. If I sat down with my friends and started making a list of names, I bet we’d pass those numbers within minutes. And keep going. (But people’s business is their business, so don’t expect an actual list of names. Sorry.)
Here’s the thing with the count: You count who you can count on the day of the count using the methodology that HUD gives you to count with. But the numbers don’t tell the whole story. They never do. I’m not sure what the answer is. But there must be a better way to count. Because an undercount isn’t much of a count, is it?
"This is the kind of fasting I want: Free those who are wrongly imprisoned; lighten the burden of those who work for you. Let the oppressed go free, and remove the chains that bind people. Share your food with the hungry, and give shelter to the homeless. Give clothes to those who need them, and do not hide from relatives who need your help." ~ Isaiah 58:5-7
