"Currently Homeless"

Near where I live, just a few blocks away, a river flows past a peaceful waterfront park. I used to go there for lunch every day. Probably will today. Last night, I was sprawled by the water on the concrete ledge where boats dock, reading and journaling and breathing in the scent of spring, watching the river rush by (murky and brown but still beautiful). As I scribbled, lost in my thoughts, I could hear a family somewhere behind me, looking at the river. I was only vaguely aware of their approach until I heard, "Look, it's a homeless girl. Hey, look, Jacob, it's a little homeless girl." I looked up. They--three adults and two children--walked nearer, and one said, "Do you mind if we push you in?" (Please, don't.) "Aren't you afraid to sit there?" (Not really. No.) "But she has a cute sweater so she must be 'currently homeless.'" It was the adults who spoke. After a minute or two, they went on their merry way, and I returned to my journal.

This wouldn't have been so disturbing had I known the people. (I think I have friends who might joke about pushing me into the river.) I didn't know them, though, and for all they knew, I could have been a homeless girl. If I were, I think I'd have felt mocked and dehumanized and humiliated. As it was, I felt that way a bit. My journal entry was derailed into a diatribe on this unsettling experience. They were speaking as though I were nothing more than a thing discarded by society, trash worthy only of mockery. As though they somehow were more significant than I by virtue of their having a home, a roof.

I was drawn back to Sonora, Mexico, and the Arizona desert, a place teeming with life but shadowed by death and prejudice and injustice. A place where a man may be stripped of his dignity without understanding why, when he is simply trying to make a better life for his family, and this is the only way he knows how because no one has ever shown him another way. The un-love of it all is infuriating.

Sitting there, writing about their words and the memories they invoked, the clouds that had been receding the whole time I'd been out by the water, slid back behind me entirely, and all I could see was this brilliantly blue sky, lit by the setting sun. Then, all I could think of was the glory of God and his love for us to give us that sky and that sun, to fill us with joy when we are downtrodden by the hurtful words of others. He loves me, and that is bigger than anything else.

"I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have drawn you with lovingkindness."
Jeremiah 31:3