So a homeless man or woman approaches you asking for money.  They may have an elaborate story, involving a baby needing food or diapers, or a story about getting stranded in town, and needing carfare to get out of town.   There are multiple theories and ideas on what you should do.  Do you give them money, buy them food, call 911, ignore them, abuse them?  If you give them money, they will a) use it for food, b) use it to get high or drunk or both.  I am taking another approach.  I don’t care about them, in this instance, I care about you.  I care about your soul. Regardless of them and their possible or probable drug or alcohol addiction or not, what of you? The traveler lays stripped of clothing, beaten, and half dead along the road. Isn’t that what drug or alcohol addiction does to a person?  Wouldn’t homeless people fall into that category? So in relation to your soul, are you the priest or the Levite?  Do you walk on by down the road?  Who is your neighbor?  Maybe this is the prodigal son on that long journey back to his family.   Maybe this is Odysseus cast up naked and battered out of the sea, on that eternal Odyssey.  Who are you?  Frederick Douglas lived in my city.   Their are underground railroad stops near my house.  There are refugees trying to cross the ocean to get here, HERE.  Who are you? Are you a Levite, or are you from Samaria?

© words by Dan DeMarle 2017