One thing I’m learning is that I have a lot to learn.

When I open my eyes and heart each day to the morning light, I ask myself, “How can I be curious and not judgmental.” (Even though I’m a big reader and love all things literary, I must admit I learned this Walt Whitman quote from Ted Lasso.)

When I put my hands, feet and words to work in my community, I try to do so with humility.

There are so many stories I don’t know. There are so many stories I need to know and to hear with the ears of my heart. This is especially true with my work at Triune Mercy Center (TMC).

This morning, before we opened our doors to the people lined up along the sidewalk beside the street in front of our building, I prayed this prayer:  

Dear God, we have a Forrest Gump kind of job. Our work is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get. Please help us be your hands and feet and heart to each person who comes through our doors today. Please help us see beauty in each face. Please help us be patient and wise in our helping. Please help us be welcoming and affirming to you, sweet Jesus, as you come to us in the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the sick and the prisoner. For Triune Mercy Center and for our world, Lord, have mercy. 

Christ, have mercy.
Lord, have mercy.
Amen.

In my helping, I sometimes forget to welcome and affirm sweet Jesus, the truly and purely human Jesus, the Jesus stripped of the robes of splendor with which He has been appareled, and the Jesus clothed once more with the course garments in which he walked in Galilee. I forget because it’s easy to think I know it all.

I don’t. There are so many stories I need to know, so many stories I need to hear.

Here’s a story I learned today:

Stephen just got housing. I feel like I should climb to the top of the steeple of Triune and shout at the top of my lungs, “Stephen got housing. Woo hoo!”

It really is that big of a deal when someone homeless gets affordable housing. Stephen, who is a little older than me, was homeless.

You might have seen him sitting along the brick wall beside the sidewalk in front of the street that passes by TMC. He had a walker with a basket beside him. In that basket was all that he owned in this world.

In the deepest parts of his twinkling blue eyes, he had an insight about the way the world is and could be that came from time spent on the streets. In his unkempt hair and scraggly beard, there was an image of…who?

Perhaps of that sweet Jesus who walked those winding roads all of those years ago.

When he sat on that brick wall, homeless and vulnerable to all of the vicissitudes of days and nights on inner-city streets, I worried about him. 

“How will he make it when winter comes?” I asked myself. “He has no place to lay his head, no place to rest his body, no place to live.”

I asked myself this question as I sat beside him one brisk fall morning and imagined what it might be like if I were in his shoes. Then, through his hard work and the hard work of our amazing social workers at TMC, he got affordable housing! I took his key to him this afternoon.

He’s at a post-acute care facility recovering from hip surgery, but he gets to go home –  HOME! –  on Thursday.

I felt pretty good about what we did for him as I walked that key into his room. He was resting in a hospital bed, listening to the birds singing outside his window.

“Hey, Stephen,” I said. “I have a surprise for you. I have your key to the place you’re going to on Thursday!”

But, you know what?

In my excitement for him, I didn’t see that he had a roommate, a poor young man with a traumatic brain injury in a wheelchair against a far wall in the room. “This is Brian,” said Stephen. “Brian, this is my associate pastor at Triune Mercy Center.”

Stephen spent the rest of my visit making sure Brian was included in every conversation and prayer.

A few short months ago, If I had passed by Stephen on the brick wall, I might have thought, “There’s a homeless guy.” Or I might have looked the other way and not thought of him at all.

But now I know a little more of his story and, therefore, a little more about him. And because I know a little more about him, I know a little more about what it means to be human.

Thanks, Stephen.

Thanks, Jesus.

Stay curious, ya’ll.