Great Insights on Humanity & Homelessness

A few more great nuggets by Mike Yankoski from Under the Overpass. This is a fantastic book and I highly recommend it!

“If we are the body of Christ—and Christ came not for the healthy but the sick—we need to be fully present in the places where people are most broken. And it has to be more than just a financial presence. That helps, of course. But too often money is insulation—it conveniently keeps us from ever having to come face-to-face with a man or woman whose life is in tatters.”

“Think about it next time you walk past someone huddled in a doorway. It’s the easiest thing in the world to decide that the woman or man huddled there is choosing to dress in rags and reek of urine and body odor. Their choice, of course, means you can’t be blamed for ignoring her or him. The person doesn’t want to be pleasant, so you don’t need to care. At the very least, you don’t have to respond as you would if it were your mother or your brother huddled there. Right? But the fact is any one of us would look about the same if we were in the same place—having survived on the same sidewalks in the same cast-off clothing for months. Even more so if we wrestled alone in that doorway day after day with a substance addiction or a debilitating mental impairment, or both.”

“How do the men and women who have been enduring the streets for years and even decades manage? By that point in our trip, both Sam and I had a new appreciation for the determination it takes to just keep moving toward the next meal. And despite it all—or maybe because of it—we had a new understanding that God gives you His strength when you need it most.”

“Little things do mean a lot, especially in the kingdom of God, where giving a drink of cold water has eternal repercussions. And I am convinced that the more committed we become to impacting one person at a time—whether through a cup of coffee or a genuine conversation—the more we’ll prepare our hearts and our churches to respond at both a community and national level. The bottom line is that real love always shows itself in action. Nothing happens or changes in this world unless, by faith, we actually do something.”