I’ve heard it said, “The trouble with Christians in the western world is not that they don’t care about the poor. The trouble is that they don’t know the poor.”
A few years ago, when our girls were very little, we took two street teens to lunch at McDonald’s. The young man wanted to get off the streets and get a job, but he couldn’t get a job without an address and couldn’t get an address without a job. He had left home because his dad was paranoid-schizophrenic and his dad’s girlfriend was also mentally ill. He needed to get out or go crazy himself.
He talked of government policies causing the poor to become more and more invisible, and that everyone just wishes they’d go away, since no one wants to see them. He talked of meeting kind-hearted employees in the food industry who feared losing their jobs if they gave him food instead of throwing it out. He had been a good student, especially in math.
The young woman didn’t want to get off the streets. She dreamed of having a place of shelter where the homeless could live in community and help each other out. She had found community in the streets. She was celebrating one week of being drug-free. She missed her child. At the end of the meal, they politely thanked us for lunch, cleaned up our garbage and said, “God bless you, especially for listening to our stories.”
Our girls never forgot that encounter. The youngest took us to task one day when we drove past a person begging on a busy street corner: “Stop!” she cried. “You have to do something! We’re supposed to do something!”
The conversation that followed resulted in a solution for times when it’s impractical to take someone out for lunch: Buy coffee shop gift cards and keep them always on hand!
I’ll never forget this summer watching our now 13-year-old daughter comfortably approaching street people in downtown Toronto, offering them a card and engaging them in conversation. The startled looks she got—and in one case, the wave and warm smile to her when we passed by again hours later—told me that my daughter had not only provided a meal, she had touched the hearts of folks who likely have had many parents scurry their children quickly past.
Am I concerned about my kids’ safety? Of course I am! We talk about safety and listening to the Spirit’s still small voice that can warn us to beware just as quickly as he can open our hearts to reach out in compassion. We need wisdom, but we also need to teach our children compassion. But then, in my experience, as I took one tiny step in that direction, it’s actually been my children teaching me. They’re much better at it than I am, and perhaps, just perhaps, if they get comfortable reaching out to people when they are little, it won’t be a big deal when they’re adults.
Linda Brnjas is regional minister of Mennonite Church Eastern Canada.
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