Interesting conversation ...

It seemed like an inocuous situation: John, his roommate Howard and I, at Superstore to buy groceries for the Mission. None of us had a loonie to get a shopping cart, so we had to go to Customer Service to get change. The woman at the counter was evidently not Christian: her name -- Harvinder -- suggested Sikh, and the headdress she wore was something I'm not familiar with -- cylindrical and flat on the top, almost like a chef's hat without the souffle coming out the top or the 100 pleats ("representing each of the ways of preparing eggs," or so the line on the short-lived TV series Providence explained it).

Somehow, she overheard that we were buying food for a lot of people. "How many people are you feeding?" "Usually about 120 a month," I replied. "About 40 each time."

"We're from Gospel Mission," John explained.

That, I thought, should have ended the conversation, but the lady pursued it.

"Don't you think those people get fed enough? How much does it really help, to feed them?"

"Well," I replied, "we don't just feed them food for the belly: we feed them the Gospel ..."

"... and how does the Gospel help them? They should be learning skills and getting off the drugs and moving on."

Great opener! "That's it exactly: the Gospel gives them hope they need to make that move to learn the skills. The best treatment program in the world won't do a thing for anybody if they don't have a reason to follow it." I explained (or tried to) that others may be called to provide training and treatment, but our calling was to provide the hope. No one can do it all (a lesson I learned not long after we opened The Lord's Rain), and our job has its place.

I can't remember the rest of the conversation word for word, but it was apparent this was a novel concept to the lady. It appeared that she was of the mind (if I read this correctly) that avoiding jail and avoiding an untimely, wasteful death should be enough incentive to get people to choose to be healthy and to get cleaned up. The idea of giving them Hope -- the intangible reason for getting up in the morning and turning your eyes towards something other than yourself -- must have sounded a little like telling a parent that a child has just smashed up all the furniture in the house because the parent failed to bolster his self-esteem.

But it really isn't the same thing. We, as ministers/missionaries, have a job in exposing people to hope and the people listening to it have a personal duty to receive it and respond accordingly. But if we're not doing our job, how else will they know about that Hope?

The conversation really wasn't about Hope and the Downtown East Side. It was more about someone wanting to hear more about Christ and doing so in a Socratic way. People were starting to line up behind us as she pursued the conversation. It's one I hope will continue another time, God willing.

To be on the safe side, I'll make sure I don't have a loonie next time we go to Superstore.