"Look out there," the street person said, "how could God allow what's going on out there?"
He was pointing to the scene in the alley across from The Lord's Rain -- still crawling with drug dealers, addicts and lookouts: the iconic symbol of poverty in the city of Vancouver. The question, too, was a familiar one, and it's one that's been asked ever since someone broached the idea that God actually loves and provides for us.
Often, discussions around The Lord's Rain dealing with God and Christ are about people genuinely trying to find their way back to Him through the drug-induce haze they've been living in. There are also people like Jeff, Marty, Jack and Joe who know their Bible and recognize it as their source of Hope where the world has let them down. But from time to time, someone will try to validate their life choices either by a bizarre stretch of the Word ("God created everything, so why couldn't a bear be my saviour?" -- honest!) or by dragging a nice, fat red herring across the path -- like the question above.
How, indeed, could a loving and all-powerful God allow crushing poverty among His people?
This just in: He's not the one responsible for poverty. People are. People make choices that many times land them in the state you see on the Downtown East Side. Sometimes, they're not there through any action of their own, but through the actions of others -- abusive parents, teachers or clergy; fetal alcohol syndrome; the economy; lack of education. Jesus says it's not for us to condemn anyone by assuming that the unfortunate state they're in at present is due to sin in the past. When He looked at the man who'd been blind since birth (John 9:1-3), He said that the blindness was not a punishment from God but an opportunity for God's glory to be shown.
More than that, people are responsible for reaching out to the poor and helping them change their lives. People are responsible for choosing whether to do so while guided by the Holy Spirit or by their own intellect ... or whether to do so at all.
I advise, by the way, against doing something while guided by one's own intellect. That usually leads to an unhealthy motive, like human pride at having one's own theory proven or turning a profit at the expense of the poor (which then leads to a situation where the problem is actually perpetuated because one then fears that solving the problem would eliminate the demand and therefore eliminate that profit).
(Einstein once said (maybe it was more than once) that you can't solve problems using the same approach that caused them. Human actions caused the problems that appear on the Downtown East Side; why should we assume that human actions will solve them?)
The fact is, God only allows poverty insofar as He created Evil in order to give Good an opportunity to shine. But as with everything, He calls us to do His work on the earth and is standing by with the power and authority we need to do it. But He also gives us the choice as to whether to respond to that call. So if we don't, and places like the Downtown East Side remain a cauldron of despair, pray that those who don't respond will have their hearts and minds opened ... and don't blame God.
Monday, May 31, 2010
Sunday, May 30, 2010
A Ground-Level Investment
A couple of things recently reminded me of one of the greatest needs in the area we serve: socks. My friend Sandra Thomas wrote in The Vancouver Courier about the closure of the Health Contact Centre on the Downtown East Side, and how one of the elements people would miss would be the face-to-face contact -- the human touch. She mentioned how "street foot" is one of the biggest blights in the neighbourhood: the horrible affliction when dirty feet get infected and then people can't get clean footwear.
That reminded me of a conversation I had with Insp. Chris Stewart, the RCMP regional commander in Port Hardy, whom I met in Port McNeill earlier this month. Chris told me about his encounter several years ago with a drunk his officers had brought in off the streets, and when he helped him get his shoes and socks off, maggots fell out from his feet. That helped spur Chris to make changes in the way such people were treated in his region.
Saturday morning, with "Mayvember" threatening to turn into "Juneuary" (in other words, a hard rain was a-fallin'), at least half a dozen people came in asking for clean socks. Praise God, several new pairs had just walked in, courtesy Barbara, our new volunteer (who'll be working with Janet on Ladies' Day -- Tuesdays, 1-4pm).
The response is good when we put out appeals for socks (and underwear!). Francis Heng and his wife, who started Big Give Vancouver, have moved to another effort, "Spare Some Socks". They did a major sock-drive just before Christmas and showed up at the Gospel Mission Christmas dinner with 450 pairs. We've only just recently given out the last of them.
But there's something missing: the socks go out ... and then they're gone. So we are launching a NEW INVESTMENT OPPORTUNITY ... (drum roll .........)
("That's so bad," said Marty, a schoolteacher getting his life back together after being suspended for drug use, "it's good!" Aha! Endorsement!)
And yes, I mean "exchange". We have laundry facilities, which are mostly used for towels and some clothing that has been discarded at The Lord's Rain but is still usable.
The idea is that during the Saturday opening of The Lord's Rain, people can come in and swap the socks they're currently wearing for a new (or new-to-them) pair. We'll take in the returned socks and if they're still wearable, we'll wash them in bleach and hot water and get them ready to hand out again.
So if you'd like to invest in the new VSE (which is a lot surer thing than the old one was), just bring your investment to The Lord's Rain when we're open -- Monday 1-3pm, Tuesday 6:30-8:30am or 1-4pm, Friday 1-3pm or Saturday, 6:30-10am -- or to Gospel Mission (upstairs) between 6:30 and 7pm.
If you can't come during those times or don't have transportation (or patience to deal with the City of Vancouver's Dig-Up-The-Roads-To-Irritate-Drivers-Program), contact me and I can pick them up.
I must say, I've been very impressed at the quality of the donations we've been receiving since we started. It's been usable, and people have been grateful to get them, whatever they've been. The Book of Malachi (1:7-8) contains some powerful passages about what the Lord thinks of "Junk For Jesus", and I'm glad to say there's none of that here. Thank you!
That reminded me of a conversation I had with Insp. Chris Stewart, the RCMP regional commander in Port Hardy, whom I met in Port McNeill earlier this month. Chris told me about his encounter several years ago with a drunk his officers had brought in off the streets, and when he helped him get his shoes and socks off, maggots fell out from his feet. That helped spur Chris to make changes in the way such people were treated in his region.
Saturday morning, with "Mayvember" threatening to turn into "Juneuary" (in other words, a hard rain was a-fallin'), at least half a dozen people came in asking for clean socks. Praise God, several new pairs had just walked in, courtesy Barbara, our new volunteer (who'll be working with Janet on Ladies' Day -- Tuesdays, 1-4pm).
The response is good when we put out appeals for socks (and underwear!). Francis Heng and his wife, who started Big Give Vancouver, have moved to another effort, "Spare Some Socks". They did a major sock-drive just before Christmas and showed up at the Gospel Mission Christmas dinner with 450 pairs. We've only just recently given out the last of them.
But there's something missing: the socks go out ... and then they're gone. So we are launching a NEW INVESTMENT OPPORTUNITY ... (drum roll .........)
THE VANCOUVER SOCK EXCHANGE
("That's so bad," said Marty, a schoolteacher getting his life back together after being suspended for drug use, "it's good!" Aha! Endorsement!)
And yes, I mean "exchange". We have laundry facilities, which are mostly used for towels and some clothing that has been discarded at The Lord's Rain but is still usable.
The idea is that during the Saturday opening of The Lord's Rain, people can come in and swap the socks they're currently wearing for a new (or new-to-them) pair. We'll take in the returned socks and if they're still wearable, we'll wash them in bleach and hot water and get them ready to hand out again.
So if you'd like to invest in the new VSE (which is a lot surer thing than the old one was), just bring your investment to The Lord's Rain when we're open -- Monday 1-3pm, Tuesday 6:30-8:30am or 1-4pm, Friday 1-3pm or Saturday, 6:30-10am -- or to Gospel Mission (upstairs) between 6:30 and 7pm.
If you can't come during those times or don't have transportation (or patience to deal with the City of Vancouver's Dig-Up-The-Roads-To-Irritate-Drivers-Program), contact me and I can pick them up.
I must say, I've been very impressed at the quality of the donations we've been receiving since we started. It's been usable, and people have been grateful to get them, whatever they've been. The Book of Malachi (1:7-8) contains some powerful passages about what the Lord thinks of "Junk For Jesus", and I'm glad to say there's none of that here. Thank you!
The Mouse & The Parking Guy
The Parking Guy is kind-of a fixture at the lot where we rent a parking space for the Mission. When the City of Vancouver closed some streets and severely restricted parking and stopping on others during the Olympics, it threatened to put a serious crimp in our ability to do our work at Gospel Mission. Not only was Cordova Street made a no-stopping-24/7 zone, but Carrall Street was dug up for the completion of the Carrall Street Greenway. They suspended work during the Games, but have closed the block outside the Mission again, while they lay in decorative streetcar rails, supposedly evocative of Vancouver's history (to be precise, the Powell Street Line branching off into the old Carrall Street Carbarn, which is now a trendy office building).
So our only option was to rent a parking space -- a remarkably prescient move, in fact: even without the ongoing street work, parking regulations on Carrall have changed.
The Parking Guy is one of numerous people on the DTES who perform little "services" for people, hoping to get a couple of bucks here and there for their efforts. In his case, he offers to assist people in buying tickets from the self-serve machine at our parking lot. Sometimes, people do need a lot of help figuring those machines out: he often provides a human presence that should make people feel a bit more comfortable about leaving their cars there.
I say "should", because he does have the look of a drug-addled panhandler who some people might consider more of a threat than a help.
Anyway, Amelia and I arrived there Saturday afternoon and were walking past him when he called out something incoherent. It took me a second to realize he was talking to us.
"Say what?" I said.
"There's a little baby mouse here," he repeated.
I paused and looked over, and sure enough, he was crouched beside a little thing-with-a-tail that was lying on a piece of paper beside the ticket machine.
"Is it still alive?" I asked.
"Yep!"
"H'm," I said, for want of anything more intelligent to say. We walked on. Amelia said they weren't there when she went back to get the car about 10 minutes later.
The image, though, stuck around. Damon Runyon (whose writing formed the basis of Guys and Dolls, my all-time favourite musical) wrote a short story called "Johnny One-Eye", about a crook-on-the-lam who befriends a stray kitten who's lost an eye; I couldn't help thinking there was a kinship between the Parking Guy and the little mouse. Both could be labelled "social detritus": who would think twice about a little mouse -- which might actually be an undersized rat -- or about some toothless, pathetic-looking guy skulking around a parking lot -- who might actually be a threat? In both cases, we'd say, "is it still alive?" and then walk on. Heck, with the mouse, we'd probably scream and run or reach for the Warfarin.
But the caring the Parking Guy had for that little creature reminds us that there is humanity among the people in that area. That little spark only needs love and hope from as many sectors as possible to fan it into a bright light. Who knows how long that little mouse would live? And yet the Parking Guy was willing to just sit next to it, even though in worldly terms he might have been powerless to do anything for it.
We may think we're powerless in worldly terms to turn people's lives around, but if we remember that there is One who has all the power necessary and just requires us to be the conduit for that Power, all it takes is for us to sit next to someone, too.
So our only option was to rent a parking space -- a remarkably prescient move, in fact: even without the ongoing street work, parking regulations on Carrall have changed.
The Parking Guy is one of numerous people on the DTES who perform little "services" for people, hoping to get a couple of bucks here and there for their efforts. In his case, he offers to assist people in buying tickets from the self-serve machine at our parking lot. Sometimes, people do need a lot of help figuring those machines out: he often provides a human presence that should make people feel a bit more comfortable about leaving their cars there.
I say "should", because he does have the look of a drug-addled panhandler who some people might consider more of a threat than a help.
Anyway, Amelia and I arrived there Saturday afternoon and were walking past him when he called out something incoherent. It took me a second to realize he was talking to us.
"Say what?" I said.
"There's a little baby mouse here," he repeated.
I paused and looked over, and sure enough, he was crouched beside a little thing-with-a-tail that was lying on a piece of paper beside the ticket machine.
"Is it still alive?" I asked.
"Yep!"
"H'm," I said, for want of anything more intelligent to say. We walked on. Amelia said they weren't there when she went back to get the car about 10 minutes later.
The image, though, stuck around. Damon Runyon (whose writing formed the basis of Guys and Dolls, my all-time favourite musical) wrote a short story called "Johnny One-Eye", about a crook-on-the-lam who befriends a stray kitten who's lost an eye; I couldn't help thinking there was a kinship between the Parking Guy and the little mouse. Both could be labelled "social detritus": who would think twice about a little mouse -- which might actually be an undersized rat -- or about some toothless, pathetic-looking guy skulking around a parking lot -- who might actually be a threat? In both cases, we'd say, "is it still alive?" and then walk on. Heck, with the mouse, we'd probably scream and run or reach for the Warfarin.
But the caring the Parking Guy had for that little creature reminds us that there is humanity among the people in that area. That little spark only needs love and hope from as many sectors as possible to fan it into a bright light. Who knows how long that little mouse would live? And yet the Parking Guy was willing to just sit next to it, even though in worldly terms he might have been powerless to do anything for it.
We may think we're powerless in worldly terms to turn people's lives around, but if we remember that there is One who has all the power necessary and just requires us to be the conduit for that Power, all it takes is for us to sit next to someone, too.
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Surely, the presence ...*
There are times in our services at Gospel Mission that the Lord "calls an audible at the line of scrimmage"** and things take off in an unexpected -- and amazingly powerful -- new direction. Saturday, I'd come to the Mission with the notes laid out for what I thought was supposed to be the sermon. Then, sitting in my office beforehand, another topic came to mind, and I wondered if there was a connection between the two topics and whether there was an elegant segue from the one to the other.
So, as I do when confronted with a situation like this that could be confusing, I simply said, "OK Lord, You show me what You want."
After the music service, I had already planned to precede the sermon by showing the segment from "100 Huntley Street", which profiled The Lord's Rain. I have to confess, as I looked at the segment again, with its images of the drug use and filthy alleys and rough-looking characters, there might be a hostile reaction among the guys. Partway through, the Lord said, "get them talking about it," so when it was over, I asked if there were any comments.
And people did start talking. They thought it was accurate and fair -- both in portraying the situation and in showing The Lord's Rain and what it does. The segment quotes Brendan (whom I've referred to before as one-half of our resident "glam couple") saying The Lord's Rain brings a sense of community, of people who truly care -- something he said was lacking elsewhere in the area. I asked the guys if we'd achieved that. It was unanimous: we have.
(Sense of community is a big deal on the Downtown East Side. The closure of the Health Contact Centre has sparked angry protests -- some of them tying up rush-hour traffic this past week -- even though the services, the official line goes, are being duplicated elsewhere. But as my friend Sandra Thomas*** writes in the Vancouver Courier, the Contact Centre provided that extra dimension: human contact. There's another dimension to the Contact Centre's closure, which, as is so often the case, concerns the matter of who stands to benefit from the Centre being closed. Stay tuned.)
And Jeff -- who's been coming to The Lord's Rain for over a year but only recently started coming upstairs to the services -- put it succinctly. "Thank you," he said. And everyone applauded.
On the one hand, I no more take personal credit for this than a baseball bat can take credit for a home run; but on the other, that sense of being obedient to God and "getting it right" is indescribably satisfying.
We were then left with about 15 minutes for the sermon, and by then, the presence of God was palpable. We talked about the sense of community that Brandon mentioned and the amazing ability we all have to confess our faults, pray for one another, and bring those faults together to the Cross for healing.
So at the Lord's reminder, I pulled out the foundation Scripture for my sermon last week at the Full Gospel church in Port McNeill -- which is one of our biggest supporters in a variety of different ways. The Scripture is John 20:11-18, where Mary Magdalene is weeping at the tomb, because "they" had taken away the body of Jesus. Jesus, I told them, was the only person who had seen her the way God intended her to be seen, and that had given her hope. Dead or alive, His body would remind her of that hope, and now, not even being able to see the body, that hope had been ripped away. That, I believe, was why she was weeping -- or, more accurately -- sobbing uncontrollably.
"They have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid Him." Notice that she doesn't even talk about the body: they've taken away her Lord.
And we talked about the way that Jesus tells Mary not to "cling" to Him, because He hadn't yet ascended to the Father, but after He had done that, He would send the Comforter -- the Holy Spirit -- who would be the new hope for Mary and for everyone else. Don't cling to anything in the world, Jesus is saying: cling to that Comforter. In fact, when we receive it, we find the Comforter clings to us.
Hope -- more than programs or money -- is the overriding need in the Downtown East Side; but also, the people in the area -- particularly those in that room -- "get it". They know that they need that hope, because the world sure isn't providing it. And for that, they're several steps ahead of a lot of rich folk, who cling to material things and are so blinded by the "god of this world" that they don't realize how much they need Jesus.
When we feel that we're totally bereft of hope, usually all we have to do is turn around -- like Mary -- and Jesus will be right there, calling our name.
Afterwards, some of the guys came up to talk about their hopes and where they wanted to go in their lives. Warren, for instance, has reappeared on the scene, about nine months after coming in the first time, asking for prayer because he hadn't felt as close to God as he had in the past. He said he received a Word at that time that helped him re-focus (I can't remember what it was): now, he says, he's back on track and some Native evangelists (notably Clarence Vickers) are urging him to start preaching.
Steve talked about having disabilities, but he's refusing to let them run his life and he's determined to show society that he can be a productive person.
Garvin -- whom I'd met before on the street but had never seen him at one of our services -- talked about going to Ottawa to take part in an anti-poverty protest on Parliament Hill; we prayed for wisdom and Grace and for the right people to be put in his path and for the Holy Spirit to give him the words he needs.
It was, in fact, an amazingly powerful service. There's no other way to sum it up. Can't even think of an appropriate way to conclu
================
*(There's an engaging and self-deprecatingly amusing story connected with that hymn, "Surely, the presence of the Lord is in this place". For a long time, I had difficulty remembering whether the line was "surely, the presence of The Lord is in this place" or "surely, the presence of God is in this place". That reached its nadir when, one Sunday morning, both versions tried to get out of my mouth at the same time and I belted out "surely the presence of Gord is in this place".)
** Another case in which I'm certain football was created to provide analogies for our relationship with God.
*** Sandra also gave us a mention in her previous column, noting the 2nd anniversary of The Lord's Rain.
So, as I do when confronted with a situation like this that could be confusing, I simply said, "OK Lord, You show me what You want."
After the music service, I had already planned to precede the sermon by showing the segment from "100 Huntley Street", which profiled The Lord's Rain. I have to confess, as I looked at the segment again, with its images of the drug use and filthy alleys and rough-looking characters, there might be a hostile reaction among the guys. Partway through, the Lord said, "get them talking about it," so when it was over, I asked if there were any comments.
And people did start talking. They thought it was accurate and fair -- both in portraying the situation and in showing The Lord's Rain and what it does. The segment quotes Brendan (whom I've referred to before as one-half of our resident "glam couple") saying The Lord's Rain brings a sense of community, of people who truly care -- something he said was lacking elsewhere in the area. I asked the guys if we'd achieved that. It was unanimous: we have.
(Sense of community is a big deal on the Downtown East Side. The closure of the Health Contact Centre has sparked angry protests -- some of them tying up rush-hour traffic this past week -- even though the services, the official line goes, are being duplicated elsewhere. But as my friend Sandra Thomas*** writes in the Vancouver Courier, the Contact Centre provided that extra dimension: human contact. There's another dimension to the Contact Centre's closure, which, as is so often the case, concerns the matter of who stands to benefit from the Centre being closed. Stay tuned.)
And Jeff -- who's been coming to The Lord's Rain for over a year but only recently started coming upstairs to the services -- put it succinctly. "Thank you," he said. And everyone applauded.
On the one hand, I no more take personal credit for this than a baseball bat can take credit for a home run; but on the other, that sense of being obedient to God and "getting it right" is indescribably satisfying.
We were then left with about 15 minutes for the sermon, and by then, the presence of God was palpable. We talked about the sense of community that Brandon mentioned and the amazing ability we all have to confess our faults, pray for one another, and bring those faults together to the Cross for healing.
So at the Lord's reminder, I pulled out the foundation Scripture for my sermon last week at the Full Gospel church in Port McNeill -- which is one of our biggest supporters in a variety of different ways. The Scripture is John 20:11-18, where Mary Magdalene is weeping at the tomb, because "they" had taken away the body of Jesus. Jesus, I told them, was the only person who had seen her the way God intended her to be seen, and that had given her hope. Dead or alive, His body would remind her of that hope, and now, not even being able to see the body, that hope had been ripped away. That, I believe, was why she was weeping -- or, more accurately -- sobbing uncontrollably.
"They have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid Him." Notice that she doesn't even talk about the body: they've taken away her Lord.
And we talked about the way that Jesus tells Mary not to "cling" to Him, because He hadn't yet ascended to the Father, but after He had done that, He would send the Comforter -- the Holy Spirit -- who would be the new hope for Mary and for everyone else. Don't cling to anything in the world, Jesus is saying: cling to that Comforter. In fact, when we receive it, we find the Comforter clings to us.
Hope -- more than programs or money -- is the overriding need in the Downtown East Side; but also, the people in the area -- particularly those in that room -- "get it". They know that they need that hope, because the world sure isn't providing it. And for that, they're several steps ahead of a lot of rich folk, who cling to material things and are so blinded by the "god of this world" that they don't realize how much they need Jesus.
When we feel that we're totally bereft of hope, usually all we have to do is turn around -- like Mary -- and Jesus will be right there, calling our name.
Afterwards, some of the guys came up to talk about their hopes and where they wanted to go in their lives. Warren, for instance, has reappeared on the scene, about nine months after coming in the first time, asking for prayer because he hadn't felt as close to God as he had in the past. He said he received a Word at that time that helped him re-focus (I can't remember what it was): now, he says, he's back on track and some Native evangelists (notably Clarence Vickers) are urging him to start preaching.
Steve talked about having disabilities, but he's refusing to let them run his life and he's determined to show society that he can be a productive person.
Garvin -- whom I'd met before on the street but had never seen him at one of our services -- talked about going to Ottawa to take part in an anti-poverty protest on Parliament Hill; we prayed for wisdom and Grace and for the right people to be put in his path and for the Holy Spirit to give him the words he needs.
It was, in fact, an amazingly powerful service. There's no other way to sum it up. Can't even think of an appropriate way to conclu
================
*(There's an engaging and self-deprecatingly amusing story connected with that hymn, "Surely, the presence of the Lord is in this place". For a long time, I had difficulty remembering whether the line was "surely, the presence of The Lord is in this place" or "surely, the presence of God is in this place". That reached its nadir when, one Sunday morning, both versions tried to get out of my mouth at the same time and I belted out "surely the presence of Gord is in this place".)
** Another case in which I'm certain football was created to provide analogies for our relationship with God.
*** Sandra also gave us a mention in her previous column, noting the 2nd anniversary of The Lord's Rain.
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