When I was living in Newport, I had a few observations of homeless people. Towards the end of my stay at your moms I had started school and was spending a lot of time at the Mariners Branch Library on Irvine. One Sunday afternoon I was there studying and in came this homeless man, filthy dirty, dark skin color, tattered clothes, dreads. He wandered through the library and then began circling the fiction section. Round and round he would go and as I observed him what became more apparent was the thirty +/- people that sat around me, not one of us even let on that we noticed him.
My second encounter was at Starbucks on PCH. I walked in and immediately was taken a back by the non-Starbucks coffee smell that usually permeates the air. As I glanced towards the counter, a homeless man stood there with his back to the counter, staring right at me with a HUGE smile on his face…
I started wondering if these Newport Beach homeless people were really angels. I wondered that the first time I saw a homeless man walking down Bayside, to the left of him were million dollar waterfront homes, and to the right of him, six-figure automobiles. Did anybody see them? Did anybody reach out to them?
I didn’t. I sarcastically responded to the smiling man in Starbucks because he made me nervous. I chose fear as my guide rather than Jesus…
Thank you for your reminder of Jesus words, His love and His longing for us that we would in turn love, trust and obey.
Love
P
