Water for the Thristy

Well today I am going to try and work through my thoughts and feelings about something I feel God is convicting me more and more about, to share God’s love with people by giving water to the thirsty, particularly the homeless. So let’s start with how I came to the point I am at now.

Several years ago now, when I started becoming re-energized about God via the messages at Liquid Church, I read about the outreach the church was doing in its community in New Jersey. One of the outreach events was giving free water to people at a gay rights parade, not because Liquid supports homosexuality, but because they wanted to show and share God’s love for everyone, regardless of whether or not you love Him. Reading this about Liquid, I imagine, was the Seed that was planted in my heart for what I believe God is calling me to now do. Though I would mark this as my original inspiration for how simple it could be to spread God’s love, I am kind of hazy on when the idea became fully formed that I should go out and give bottles of water to the homeless.

Those of you who don’t know, I worked in Santa Monica, CA for about a year and a half, and Santa Monica for some reason is one of the homeless hot spots of Southern California. If I were to guess, there is something about the beach weather and being on the streets of a fairly wealthy community/shopping district that is attractive to the down-and-out to Santa Monica.

Santa Monica Homeless

While working there, I would see the homeless along the sidewalks when I would get out of the office and walk to lunch, and to be completely transparent, I dreaded walking on the same side of the street as them. Aren’t I a loving guy? Though I wanted to give money to them, I rarely did, I was always nagged by the thought of whether or not the person was legit, were they dangerous, or if they would use the money for food/clothes or alcohol/drugs. Yet at the same time I felt guilty for not helping them, and so passing them on the other side allowed me to ignore them and not feel as guilty. I know, it is sad and it is ugly, and I hate that I have this uncompassionate, selfish side of me, but it was and still is there. For me it is typically so much easier to pull a judge or priest on someone I see in need rather than stopping and trying to help. I have no idea if God was able to shape me or my thinking while I worked in SM, but I know I certainly didn’t make any kind of impact on anyone there.

As I have been trying to remember back, I think it was around the time I began working in Studio City, CA (December 2006), and seeing off-ramp-beggars every other day, that an the Seed began to grow its roots as an idea for helping these people took hold. I think it was around this time that my wife told me about I guy she knew in college that would carry bags of food in his car and give them to people he saw in need along the street. I thought that was a really amazing thing and the fact that is was just this one guy making a difference like that was really impactful on me. I most often feel that to make any sort of difference in the world you either need a concerted group effort or you need to be a humanitarian superhero (I’m looking at you Mother Teresa’s ghost). But hearing about this guy from my wife, made the idea that I could do something all on my own, tangible. Of course it may not be as big as a Men’s church group going down to Tijuana and building houses for people who live in shanties made from garage doors, but it was finally becoming real that it would be doable for me to help those in need on my own. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy helping out in a group, working on a big project, but those efforts take time to organize and typically only last during a narrow window, whereas it is a lot more flexible if I am just making plans for me to do something ;). Anyways back to the time line Marty. So still in SC, from 2006-08 I still was uncomfortable about being the car that could help the beggar and didn’t. Unlike in Santa Monica however, I feel like that unease was God gently prodding me not to forget about those who had fallen on hard times, rather than Him condemning me with guilt for being heartless.

What I'm sure she would say, if she were alive today ;)

Now my wife and I live in OR and let’s say that the last edge piece of the puzzle fell into place (some of the middle is down but the puzzle is certainly not complete). Or to continue the analogy, the Seed is beginning to sprout. Last weekend our church, Westport, started a fund-raiser (for lack of a better term although I hate the baggage that comes with it) to raise money for a clean-water well in India, through Advent Conspiracy and Living Water International. This is really imporatant because something I hadn’t realized is that more than one billion people (addn. source) on this planet don’t have access to clean water, and that the ones most affected of these are children, of whom 1.8 billion die each year from diarrhea alone. And all it takes for a shallow well to be built is $5000. Mysteriously though, while this effort from our church is certainly global, God has used it to attune my heart and mind for a mission to be done locally. A few weeks back my wife and I were having dinner with family at a resturaunt on what I am going to call the 23rd St. Corridor (I’m sure it has a more illustrious name though). If you have lived in Portland for a bit you have probably been there, there are lots of niche shops and eateries, for example one store is entirely devoted to wrapping paper. Anyways my wife and I were walking to our car and we passed a homeless person on the sidewalk. We passed by him, but instead of feeling dread or unease as I would have in the years prior, I felt like I wanted to sit by him ,ask him about his story, and let him know he was not forgotten. And then I knew this was the place to start!

So here is my plan, this coming summer (2009) I am going to buy a case of water, chill it and give it to the homeless I meet while I walk the Corridor. I have no idea the reception that awaits me, I just know that, at least for a little while, this is what I need to do. And you might ask why I don’t start now? Certainly part of me wants to begin right away, but I think there are two big reasons for waiting until the summer. First off, I don’t think water is going to be terribly sought after, here in the rainy North West winter, where as summer, with its sweltering high 80s (j/k I was surprised at how hot it actually was last summer) would be much better timing for free water distribution. The second reason, is I want to be able to do a little more planning and get feedback from others on what I plan to do. And on that note…

If you have suggestions, advice, warnings, and/or prayers please leave a comment with them :).

Thanks much.