Created by God

This is where reality meets you.

The sights, the sounds, the smells of the street - people living in dumpsters, rooting through yesterday's garbage and fighting with birds, raccoons, flies and bugs for a few bites to eat.  Smelling like they haven't bathed in months. Well, they haven't.

And they are no less precious to God than you and I.

The weather is getting colder.  Winter is coming.  What of them?  where will they sleep?  what will they eat?

They'll sleep where they always have - they'll eat what they always have. Or haven't.  They'll get chased out of coffee shops, liquor stores, and malls.  They'll beg for change on the street.  And we turn away and don't want to look.  Perhaps we judge them for not being responsible and getting a job.  At best, maybe we don't want to admit that there are people in this prosperous country (debatable) who live lives like wild animals, scrounging for food and depending on the wastefulness and sometimes, but rarely, the kindnesses of others. 

They do, though. 

One of the most precious old men I know is a man I know only as Joseph. He's homeless. He can't work; he has a disability.  He has family but he can't seem to stay put and so ... he travels.  Hitch-hiking, walking mostly.  He smells like B.O., evergreens and wood smoke.  And he is the most gentle soul I've met in a very long time.  A ready smile behind his bushy gray beard and twinkling eyes peeking out from behind several winter coats, he loves to stop by a church for a Sunday morning service.  He loves God with all his heart.  And he loves God's people.  Especially children - he is so tender with them.  

What a saint.  I am honoured to know him.  Yet - there are those who would not be able to get past the smell and the ruggedness of this fellow.  How much they miss!!

I suggest, for this Christmas season, watching the popular Christmas movie again, "Home Alone 2."  In that movie, there is a relationship forged between our hero Kevin MacAllister and a homeless woman who feeds the pigeons in Central Park.  It's worth the watch just to see how a simple act of kindness can sometimes be all someone needs - could be anyone by the way - to turn on the light in his or her life and replace despair with a glimmer of sunshine... or moonlight.

Let's let it inspire us to give in the spirit of Nicholas, the old saint who gave to the poor at Christmas, to those who could never hope to repay him, just because they also were created by God.

One of the dichotomies (side-by-side contrasts) presented in Disney's "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" is the song of the leading lady, Esmeralda, as she prays to God.  A bit of history:  the "gypsies" they refer to in the movie were actually French Hugenots - Protestants, who took on an itinerant life and entertained to pay their way in the world, ostracized by religious types like Frollo, the cruel magistrate who persecuted and imprisoned dozens of them.  Listen to her pray her "gypsy's prayer" ...

When the respectable ones prayed, they asked for wealth, fame, glory, love, blessing.  Sounds a lot like today's middle- and upper-class church members. All she prays for (and not for herself) is for God to help the downtrodden.

Wow. That's all I can say.