Walking With The Homeless Jesus

R3 Contributor

I was struck this morning, once again, by how exhausting it is to be without a home. The homeless panhandler Jesus once said, “Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head” (Mt 8:20, Lk 9:58). I imagine Jesus, like our guests, got quite exhausted from not having a regular place to stay. During the course of a morning at Manna House, at least three or four guests will fall asleep on one of the couches while all sorts of activity takes place around them. Sometimes the sleep is so deep that the melodious sound of snoring will fill the air. This morning I didn’t hear any snoring, but I noticed our sleeping guests again, sitting up, but with heads down and eyes closed. One guest told me as we talked about being tired from the streets that he once got so tired that he fell asleep while he was walking.

“Seriously?” I asked.

“Seriously. I wouldn’t have believed it myself except I did it.”

This gives a whole new meaning to sleepwalking.

Later, while I was doing laundry, I came upon some further evidence of how exhausting it is to be on the streets. A guest has traded in his worn out shoes for another pair of shoes. The old shoes that he had traded in had ended up in the laundry basket (we actually use a large trash can). When I fished them out as I sorted the laundry, I took a look at the soles of the shoes. The soles were so worn that there were large holes in both shoes, both in the ball of the foot and the heel of the foot. The holes were so big that I found it hard to believe that some one had actually been walking in these shoes. I couldn’t help but think that being on the streets isn’t just hard on the soles, but is also hard on the soul. There’s the physical exhaustion, and then there is the spiritual exhaustion of trying to keep some sense of one’s dignity while wearing worn out shoes and dirty and smelly clothing.

The miles add up as a person on the streets goes through the day. I know we have guests who come from as far as five miles away to get to Manna House. They walk those five miles each morning we are open. And, of course, when we close, they will not only walk another five miles back to the cathole where they sleep, but more miles in order to get a meal or two from different soup kitchens spread out around town. Even for some one who has a cathole near Manna House, there will be eight to ten miles of walking on a typical day. That amount of walking alone would be exhausting enough, but then add on sleeping on the ground or on a piece of cardboard on concrete.

There is an old Merle Haggard song, “He Walks With Me” which refers to walking with Jesus, and the refrain is:

“And He walks with me and He talks with me

And He tells me I am His own

And the joy we share as we tarry there

None other has ever known “

I have a sense that Jesus walks with our homeless guests, just as Jesus himself walked as a homeless person with no where to lay his head. I hope we welcome our guests as Christ has welcomed us (Romans 15:7). I hope the rest our guests get at Manna House gives some joy in the midst of exhaustion. But I more deeply hope for a time when the words of the Psalmist will come true, in which, “God raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heap; gives dignity to their lives, a place of honor with all the faithful” (Ps 113:7).

Follow Peter on Twitter @petegath

Walking with the Homeless Jesus