Showing posts with label street people. Show all posts
Showing posts with label street people. Show all posts

Monday 18 July 2016

Hope for the Hopeless



Tired, always tired, and gaunt, you wouldn’t look in the mirror if it was thrust in your face because you knew what you’d see and it isn’t a pretty sight.
Faded, unwashed hair straggling around your face is the least of your concerns, but the eyes…Oh those eyes, the dark look of hopelessness looming there is what makes others look away, it is so, so…what it is? Only you can say for sure: lonely? Despairing? Filled with a lifetime of pain, heartache, and grief?
You are plodding down a crowded street, shoved or avoided by the hurrying throng that you hardly notice, but you need a fix: that is your consuming desire, a fix, a fix, but that is exactly what you wanted to avoid at all costs.
 For ten, fifteen, maybe even twenty years or more your life has been a mess of addiction, prostitution and other details known only know to you but where oh where can you get your next very fleeting thrill from a pill, a bottle or a needle?
Natalie, yes, that’s a real person, was facing the same desperate situation once.  After serving time in jail, you can imagine what for, she had nowhere to turn, no place to live but, maybe with her sister.
She had been wandering, drifting for so many years that she absolutely loathed it. After reaching the empty apartment Natalie wandered out to the balcony and thought of ending her life by jumping down, but it wasn’t far enough. Across the normally teeming street was a new building going up with scaffolding high in the air. That’s where she was headed: that would be a good place to leap from.
 For some reason there was no one around which was very unusual, as she crossed the street, however, a small black man came out of the shadows and handed her a handwritten letter while saying: ‘Jesus loves you’. She paused to read it and one thing lead to another until she found out about Heart Seasons.
If you live in New York City maybe you have heard about them.
Natalie found a group of people with as bad a history as hers. She found other ‘sisters’ who had tried to recover countless times from addictions, but here at Heart Seasons there was hope. Yes, there really was.
This center was different than many; it focused on Jesus as the only answer. The program was strict, really strict for they were expected to take part in several hours of Bible study every single day, and were not allowed to ever leave without an escort.
After a year and a half or way longer if they wanted, if a person stuck with the program they could graduate, if they were ready. Being ready meant being able to rent an apartment and have a job for at least three months. Most were terrified of leaving, but of course,
they weren’t abandoned, they had their support group, and best of all they had Jesus.
Are you like Natalie, desperate, despairing and certain you have tried every ‘solution’ out there?
There is hope. There truly is. Jesus can be your anchor from drifting back into sin. There are friends of Jesus who would love to reach out to you, also.
 Contact me, if you want and I’ll see what I can do to help. Look up HeartEase in the telephone book, or elsewhere. I’m trying to find an address for you.
P.S. I tried to find the website for you but the link appeared to be broken: try this:

The Bowery Mission Women’s Center at Heartsease Home


Whatever you do, never, never, never give up; there is hope. 

Thursday 10 July 2014

More About Africa. Soon.


More About Africa! Soon.

Wow! Look at that! My laptop is actually working! It’s sure handy having a son in law visit that is more knowledgeable than I am when it comes too messed up computers! Even he couldn’t fix the PC though. It was threatening imminent failure long before that infamous hacker got his fingers on my files.

Okay, okay, I know you came here to check out the details of our trip so I’ll get to it. Be assured of one thing, though. These reports shouldn’t sound quite so much like they were scribbled off in haste while the library clock was ticking ‘cuz now I can work at them at home and maybe even catch my errors before you do!






Let me see: have we left the Heathrow airport behind? Maybe we left Rye too quickly! I never told you about the antique and tea shops and famous English breakfasts! (I had delicious smoked haddock, though!) Oh well, find out for yourself if you’re drooling with curiosity. We’re heading for the terminal.

World Travel is just another name for Hurry Up and Wait, right? I don’t know how many times we did exactly that. We had time on our hands after arriving at the airport so did a little Short-Distance exploring. We hadn’t walked very far down a busy, bustling street when we met an interesting character. He was a street person with all his earthly goods piled into a grocery cart. We stopped and chatted for a while and learned that he had spent the last seven years caring for his mother who had dementia. As the story unfolded it became more disturbing. As a lad “Johann” had grown up Greek Orthodox but was now agnostic. His father, while in a drunken rage, would beat him and his mother cruelly in spite of being most pious on Sundays.


When his mother became ill, did he help? No, it was up to “Johann” to support her and watch, alone, as she gradually went downhill. She died two or three months before we met him. But like I said “Johann’s” dad was very devout, so guess what he did with the inheritance that normally goes at least partly to the children? He donated it to the church so that his soul would be prayed for, for 36 Sundays.

In the course of the conversation we admitted that many atrocities have been done in the name of Christ, but they were definitely not the Father’s will. We encouraged him to make a direct connection with the Father, because God is love, and He can lead him. As you read this, please whisper a prayer for this gentleman. I would love to meet him in Heaven and find out how his story unfolded from there.