Nazarite Call

Last week I had the privelage of serving a Thanksgiving lunch at a neighboring soup kitchen called “The Mission”. Not having done alot of work in this particular field, I was a little nervous to say the least. Being out of my comfort zone is something I find very very challanging and so here I was given an opportunity to serve, but was also faced with the fear of venturing into unknown territory. In the beginning I just prayed that God would help me to make it through. To not have any incidents and to come out, hopefully in one piece.

After some finishing preperations, the doors were opened and these broken souls began to file in. We had each been assigned tables to serve and maintain, so I just began waiting on the ones who chose to sit at my table. As I began serving, I was struck by how perfectly ordinary these people were. Sure they were wearing dirty mismatched clothes, had knotted hair and no jobs, but they were people, broken lost people. Not a statistic on the 6:00 news, not just a nusance or a problem, but real down to earth people. Some came in with disabilities. Some mentally, some physically and some emotionally, but God opened my eyes to see how much they were just like me.

I began to think about how each of them had at one point been someone’s little baby, someone’s child and I began to wonder, “What was is it that happened to them? That between now and then, they now find themselves homeless, broken, and needy?” Each of them had a story, each of them had a past, but in this world known as the ’American Dream’ no one really thinks about that. Alot of times we just see them as lazy, dumb bums who just refuse to get their act together. But with each new person that came in, with each new person I served, my heart began to grow with this compassion I didn’t know I could have. There was such a sweet sense of the presence of God in that place that by the time we were finished I couldn’t wait for the next time I could serve them again.

Then today as I was just resting on my bed, I came across this song on my ipod called, ‘Somebody’s Baby’. It was written by a man by the name of Jon Foreman and the lyrics of the song really gripped my heart. It took me back to that experience at ’The Mission’ last Thursday and the raw reaility of how jaded we can become to the broken and dying around us. This song has really challanged me to once again take another look at the way I see the world. At the way I can be so quick to judge, so quick to criticize. I’m praying that God would really open my eyes and open my heart to see what He sees. To feel what He feels when He looks at these broken ones. That I would be able to see ‘Destiny’ written over their heads and and not ‘Addict’, ‘Victorious’ and not “Defeated, ‘Reachable’ and not ‘Lost Cause’. To have a revelation, that that is what I would look like without God. That that would be my story if He hadn’t come, if He hadn’t found me, if He hadn’t pursued me and captured my heart.

If you would like to hear the song “Somebody’s Baby” please click on the link provided below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOCZ3U3Znm8