An ambulance and fire truck screamed past us and halted at the entrance to Hope City. By the time we entered the building, paramedics were making their way back through the crowded community room. The man on the gurney didn’t look so good. Word was that he’d had a seizure and cracked his head on the cement floor when he fell from his chair. We stepped aside for them to pass.
Hope City KC, the church, the inner-city prayer room, drug rehab, and food pantry is already a buzz of activity as it is. That buzz increased significantly this winter when we also served as a warming center for Kansas City’s homeless.
When we arrive too early to teach our class upstairs, my husband usually sets out in search of our pastor. I spotted a staff member manning the table with sign-up sheets for the shower and washing machines and headed that way.
But my chat with him was cut short because he needed to provide toiletries to the next in line for the shower. Then a homeless woman asked for a bottle of water. He fetched her water. A different lady wanted a plastic bag. He showed her where the bags were. Someone else needed a towel. Another, a bar of soap. The poor staffer was up and down from his chair like a youngster on a pogo stick. “Do you have containers for leftovers?” “Can I use your phone?” “I think you skipped me for the shower.”
If acts of kindness to the poor, the down and out, the drug addicted, and those with mental health issues are noted in heaven, then I’d say the servants of Christ at Hope City KC are high on the roster for receiving blessings in return. I moved on so they could locate the man’s name on the list.
I was on my way to the prayer room at the opposite end of the building when I realized that I’m always on a mission when I’m at Hope City. Prayer meetings, church, classes, seldom do I stop long enough to drink in all that goes on around me.
It was 12:30. The ten o’clock prayer meeting was over. Hot lunches had been served, and I could hear the banging of pots and pans as staff cleaned up the aftermath in the kitchen.
The community room was a vacillating sea of sights and smells, of soiled bodies and troubled souls in need of God’s healing balm. Strangers to me, most of them. Some were visiting at their tables; others were sitting alone, eyeing those coming and going as though they were potential dangers. Still others seemed lost in their own worlds, like the female with hair wild as a tumbleweed and the man who sat next to her. Was he even a little concerned that she had slumped against him with her face burrowed into the folds of his frumpish coat while he finished his meal? The man with shoulder-length dreadlocks that looked like a cross between frayed rope and week-old roadkill on the highway, what invisible friend was he speaking with when he passed me outside the kitchen door? What was his sad story?
Our regular crowd was also present. I’ll not use their real names. They are family.
Scout, with his grungy blanket draped over his shoulders, had been standing outside the door like an imposing royal guard on duty when we entered the building. He’s always the first to greet us. Homeless by choice. A friend dear to our hearts. Beside him in the grocery cart with his earthly possessions was a brown stuffed bear. He still grieves the loss of his daughter.
Alice. Another regular at Hope City, and a new believer in Christ. We’ve prayed together numerous times over the city’s removal of her thirty-plus dogs, her displacement from her home, her having to reside in a tent, and finally a trailer—which may have changed again because she spent a few nights in our warming center. Lord knows the hardness of her journey and the depths of her unsettledness.
Glenda has frequented Hope City for well over a decade. Haunted by spirits, oftentimes agitated by something or with someone, yet she stands in the doorway or sits on the back row in nearly every Sunday service.
Amy lives in the neighborhood. She’s also a believer. We’ve been praying with her for her son. He’s still missing. Most likely drugs.
Such a heart-rending patchwork of human pain, and suffering, and imperfections congregated under one roof. What is it that shattered their hearts? What broke their spirits and stole away their dreams, their God-given dignity? Could they have reacted differently to the pain and sorrow that landed them in a warming center?
The lady receiving prayer from a staffer while they sat off to themselves on the cement steps, had it mattered to anyone else that she looked so pale and sickly? The haggard-looking woman drying her hair beneath the hand dryer on the wall of the women’s restroom when I entered, she's someone’s mother, their grandmother living on the streets. The man with hands so filthy they were black as coal. What tragic story is he toughing out? Those stretched out on couches and on the floor in the quiet hallway outside the prayer room, is sleep their only peace and solace? Whose sister, brother, father, are they? Surely somebody misses them.
My husband once heard a friend pray in regard to the homeless he feeds on the streets, “Lord, I hope I smell this way when I stand before You so You’ll know I’ve been with Your people.”[i] May that be the case with us. Lord, the plight of the poor and oppressed is a subject interwoven throughout Your Word. They obviously matter greatly to You. Help us to remember those in need, not only in our prayers but in serving, because when we serve them, we serve You.[ii]
For I was hungry, and you fed me. I was thirsty, and you gave me a drink. I was a stranger, and you invited me into your home. I was naked, and you gave me clothing. I was sick, and you cared for me. I was in prison, and you came to visit me. [iii]
Photo by Steve Grimm
[i] Ricky Beach – White Stone Ministries
[ii] Galatians 2:10; Matthew 25:40
[iii] Matthew 25:35–36; Proverbs 14:31; Proverbs 19:17
Just phenomenal Debbie….simply phenomenal….