Point of Aim

The archer stands with feet slightly apart, side on to the target, solid and yet relaxed and confident; after all, he’s just completed a bull’s eye and knows that he can repeat it indefinitely. He pulls to a full draw and adopts a nice tight anchor with the nock of the arrow directly below his aiming eye and sets the point of aim at just the right spot and without thinking, runs through a checklist of items – stance, arm position, tension on the string, wind, anchor, point of aim…let’s fly the arrow and bull’s eye again! The archer knows that with any deviation from repeating the shot the result will be different and that he will not achieve the bull’s eye if his point of aim is off, even a percentage of a degree. If he moves further from the target or even closer, to the right or to the left, he must adjust his point of aim to compensate for the changes if he hopes to achieve the bull’s eye. For him to change his position relative to the target and not change the point of aim is folly and sure failure; the target remains the same, his goal remains the same, he has changed, and so he must compensate to achieve his goal.

As Christians, our lives are like that. The target is always the same, Jesus Christ and His Righteousness. The goal is the same, being welcomed into His Kingdom to hear the words “Well done My good and faithful servant.” The problem is that we change in relation to the target and our goal of achievement does not remain the same. We age, learn worldly wisdom, enter into relationships, gain maturity and responsibility, and sometimes find it difficult to locate the target or even care about it. Then something happens to remind of us of who we are and what He means to us and our desire to hit the target is refreshed. How do we aim from our new position, where do we find our point of aim? We take our stance as before, fully draw the arrow of our commitment, find the tip of the arrow, and we let it fly only to see the arrow fall short or strike to the side, or even sail far and above the target. Life on campus, in the new corporate office, in retirement, becoming a parent, spouse, or from a hospital bed has changed us in relation to the target. So what then? We can’t go back to where we first drew a bull’s eye, we are forever changed by any of those circumstances and the target remains the same. Perhaps we get blessed with an abundance of grace and the first new arrow strikes true. Excellent! What with the next arrow? Still we’ve changed, that’s inevitable and, frankly, desirable since we are clay on the Potter’s wheel and must change to be the piece he wants us to be.

What do we do as archers for Christ when our arrows fall off target? His grace is enough, His sacrifice complete. We ask forgiveness, take out another arrow and adjust our point of aim, and let it fly again! The change in our point of aim does not necessarily need to be radical; actually it probably shouldn’t be radical. A small change, subtle adjustment in the altitude of our aim is probably best most of the time and will allow for each arrow to draw closer to the bull’s eye with precision and prediction. Radical changes in our position to the target may require radical changes to our point of aim but once we see our arrows falling more and more true to our goal, the changes should become more subtle. Remember this; we are not finished until our last arrow falls true to the target.

What is in a Name? Plenty.

Juliet, in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet said, "What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet." I believe that I have to agree with her; after all, if you take away my name I am still employed by AT&T, am 6’3”, bow-legged, don’t have quite enough hair, and smell fairly good after a shower. The only problem in getting rid of our names would be how people would find us. For sure, looking for me someone could use the physical traits I’ve listed and what I do for a living. Do you think someone who doesn’t already know me could find me? There are over 6 billion people on earth but we’ve already trimmed that down to the 300,000 who work for AT&T. You could start using things that define who I am or what I carry in my soul; things like, he loves kids, prays for people, is a bit of a curmudgeon, likes making people laugh and helping them through hard times. You could start describing things I do like; occasionally writes blogs, likes riding motorcycles, was a fair basketball player, liked coaching. We have narrowed it down but there are still a lot of people out there with many of those traits. Just to keep it simple and allow folks to find me because, most of the time, I like being found because I like people; I think that I’ll keep my name.

Over the years I have accumulated a number of nicknames, most of them good and fun; some, not so much. I’m sure we all are collecting them, from our families, our friends, our work friends, teams, and any number of places and they are usually for something we’ve done or do or say or some physical attribute that stands out for some folks. I’ve been jotting mine down while writing this and was up to 20 when I posted it. Some of the ones used to tease me or given to me in a disparaging way I can live without. There is one that I earned as a less than complementary comment on my basketball skills that I came to embrace because it associates me with my high school basketball team that I am still proud to have been a member of.

There are two that I embrace now and love to hear. A few weeks ago I posted a Facebook status of “More melodic than the sounds of the harp, or uplifting than the chiming of village victory bells are the shouts of ‘Opa’ from my grandchildren when I walk into the room.” I got many likes and a few comments on that one and it’s true, I love hearing it and it makes me feel loved. The other one has grown over my years of youth ministry and one that many of the kids, some now young adults, who came through the junior high group and went to Mission Arizona use. When I hear it from these young people that I love, pray for, believe for, and hope for, it makes me feel loved and cared about. They call me Jer-Bear.

 

What, you may ask, does this have to do with Calvary’s Thread? Why, plenty of course. We have a bible full of names for God the Father, Jesus His Son, and the Holy Spirit. I have a list of them at my elbow in two columns, three pages long. They are very descriptive of who God is, what he is to his people, and how he relates to us. When we use them in our prayers, in our worship, and how we describe Him to others, God feels loved and appreciated. We should use them whenever we can because while He is unfathomable, they help us understand who God is and helps us relate to Him.  My friend Courtney recently posted a Facebook status and wrote the name out “G~d” and explained that our Jewish brothers and sisters don’t write out the whole name out of a deep reverence for Him. However we call Him; do it reverently.

Here are just a few names for our God for your consideration:

V  Alpha and Omega, as well as the Almighty in Revelation 1:8

V  Blessed Hope in Titus 2:13

V   Bread of Life in John 3:29

V  Changeless One in Malachi 3:6 and Hebrews 13:8

V  Good Shepherd in John 10:11

V  Helper in Hebrews 6:20

V  King of kings in Revelation 19:16

V  I am in John 18:6

V  Great Physician in Luke: 4:23

V  Lord of the Harvest in Matthew 9:38

V  Rose of Sharon in song of Solomon 2:1

V  Our Shelter in Psalms 61:3

This is the link I found to a nice resource for the names that I’ve used here:

Crown Him With Many Crowns

For our two brothers who will be spending a lot of time in the Gospel of John over the next few months and those of us who will be hearing them, I did a quick scan of this document and found that John’s Gospel accounts for 29 of the listings.

 

I think that it is worthwhile to consider all of the names for God and even to use descriptors from our own creative source because He is, after all, inexhaustible (I didn’t find that one on the list but find it appropriate). Then, when we are done with this consideration, I think that it would be worthwhile to simply empty our thoughts of all names and descriptors to love Him as God.

Tend my flock

Jesus said, “Take care of my sheep.” John 21: 16

 A couple of Sundays ago I was sitting in church trying in vain to prepare myself to worship and I just couldn’t get beyond my disgruntled parishioner’s attitude; a couple of events were dominating my mind with disapproval and concern. I prayed for the Lord to show me what to do about it, how to behave, and dozens of other how questions. The immediacy of the reply was striking, like a bucket of cold water on my back. The reply itself was no less shocking in the conviction it brought to me. There was no how in the answer, nothing to tell me how to behave about my concerns, and not really any mention of the events at all, only a command, “Tend my flock.”

 This took me straight away to John 21: 15 – 19 where Jesus reveals Himself after the resurrection to Peter and the other disciples who had gone fishing. Jesus then confronts Peter’s betrayal by questioning Peter’s love for Jesus. To each of Peter’s three replies that he loved Jesus, Jesus replied in return “Feed my sheep”, “Take care of my sheep”, and again, “Feed my sheep”. Have I betrayed Christ, denied Him, any less than Peter when I put my servant’s call to the side? No, and unfortunately far more than the three times Peter made his denials. Still nothing concrete about how this would take place or what shape it might form.

Fine; now what? It used to be somewhat simple to identify myself as a shepherd when I was consistently with students as a Sunday school teacher, Jr. High/Sr. High Advisor, mission trip leader, session member, and committee chairperson. I’ve drifted and fought the tides since those “job titles” ended and, quite frankly, used the separation as an excuse to give up or grouse about things. The task at hand is to identify His sheep that I need to take care of; not an easy task and not one that likely will take any concrete shape in the near future. As an elder in the church it is still incumbent on me to find the flock, tend the flock, and see them safe.

John tells us of Jesus speaking on the attributes of the Good Shepherd in chapter 10 of his Gospel; verse 14 “I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me-“. The more we strive to be good shepherds the more we will identify the sheep we are to care for and the more they will identify with us. We cannot pick and choose the members of our flock, we cannot pick and choose whom we will serve and feed. Even when segments of the flock might not be cool, hip, or in the center of what our personal vision is for the flock, we must seek the Father’s wisdom to meet their needs even when it might require efforts that take us away from the limelight or if it takes resources we would personally rather see going elsewhere.

Jesus defined it like this in John 10: 11 when He said “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” It is probably pretty plain to anyone called to any sort of shepherd’s ministry that this doesn’t only mean literally dying for the sheep, but, and sometimes more difficultly so, setting aside the things we’d rather be doing to take care of the sheep, all of them.

As for me, seeing the way I shepherd change and identifying those I need to tend, I think that I’ll start by looking for ways to effectively pray and intercede for them, find creative ways to make sure they are fed, and seek for ways to make sure they are healthy and looking to the Father. I think I’ll start with this group:

V  Family - wife, kids, sisters, parents, grandkids…extended family

V  Alumni, some who have grandchildren of their own now, others who haven’t yet reached High School, and a whole bunch in between

V  Fellow workers who’ve served well, some I see now and some I miss very much

That’s probably a big enough group to work with now. They should start seeing me pop up from time to time to encourage them or just check in. I should be more consistent with this communication tool and I am going to see how Tangent can be revitalized in some creative way to keep folks connected. God help me.

Good Grief...Where Did That Come From?

I believe that Christians inherently carry grief that, for the most part, remains beneath the surface. It is the grief for our God having to suffer for all of our shortcomings and the knowledge that we do not live up to the sacrifice He made for us. Our grief bubbles out from the least of events to our most poignant losses and carries with it components of the personal loss and the underlying grief for our inadequacies. Grief should never be summarily dismissed as an unchristian display of disbelief; after all, didn’t Jesus himself grieve for his friend Lazarus, his family, and friends? I encourage you to read John 11: 1 – 44 as Jesus shows us how to grieve and comfort those who also grieve, and transcend the grief to victory.

My latest brush with grief has caught me by surprise. It was like a cloud on the horizon, all fluffy and white, harmless seeming as it made its appearance, only to reveal its dark underlining as it cleared the horizon and came fully into view. For certain, this was no monsoon but a cloud that carried with it the promise of a brief shower and the potential for heavenly fireworks and the rumblings of discontent. So strange that the loss of our pet cockatiel Mo, whom I dubbed The Sentry as I dug his grave, would release such feelings complete with all the classic pains. I learned many years ago not to be ashamed of my penchant for emotional displays; they are a part of who I am and I try to embrace the moment and share it with my friends and family to become a point of bonding. I believe that grief, like many wounds, benefits from being in the open and breathing to help the healing process. Bearing that in mind, we must guard against letting the grief fester and become infected; the complications can be costly.

I let one of my greatest loses grow to the point of becoming cancerous. I’d lost one of my closest of friends, Doug Clark, to an untimely accident at the hands of a drunk driver, Doug being the only one in his car that died and was the only one in the car without a broken bone. I questioned God to the point of swearing to myself that I would ask Him for an explanation of this when I finally meet Him. Where was He for me in this? Was not Doug the first person I knelt with in prayer that opened the door to Christ to enter his heart? How could He take him like this, what was the point? I carried those questions and they fermented into a bitterness that could only be cured by a miracle healing, one came at the hands of the first Mission Arizona team I was on that, when I exposed the scars of this, laid hands on me and brought healing to my spirit. The faith and capabilities of junior high students are amazing.

Let’s wrap this up with a quick look at Jesus and Lazarus, shall we? Jesus heard that his friend Lazarus was ill but did not immediately run to Bethany to heal him. Instead, Jesus continued with what he was doing and operated in faith that God was yet to be glorified in Lazarus. Even though Jesus faced the enmity of those in the area, once Lazarus was dead he left for Bethany knowing God would be glorified in him and his friend Lazarus, “the one you love” (John 11: 3). Upon arriving on the scene Jesus faced the questions about him not being there for them and then his grief came into the open and he grieved for his friend and those who also loved Lazarus. In short, Jesus recognized that grief was on the horizon, continued to do the Father’s will, met the grief when it came upon him and his friends, and then took charge of the grief and in faith raised Lazarus from the dead. I love the last part of this scripture where Jesus says “Take off the grave clothes and let him go.” To me He is saying, take off the bindings of your grief and be free, rejoice that my Kingdom draws near.” And to that I have to say that I have a large heart, plenty of room there to remember the lost in kindness, and let more in.

In His Grip - jerry

Who’s in Control Here Anyway?

Romans 7: 15 “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate, I do.” (NIV)

I have been casting about looking for something to write about, to post in Calvary’s Thread, for weeks now as well as something for Iron Side Up and PAR and have little success to show for the casting. The struggle is not necessarily over a lack of material, there was Mission Arizona, church each Sunday, riding to work and little jaunts around town, and I spent two days in PAR’s first destination taking notes and yet, there has been no writing. I feel so strongly that I should be writing; so much so that sometimes I think that if I’m not writing or working at it then I am distracted, to the point that even sleep seems a waste of time. So then, why am I not writing? Certainly the responsibilities of work and maintaining a home and family take a lot of time and cannot logically be set aside. Indeed, if I were to set them aside, what then would I write about? Abandoning myself and my loved ones? Not likely.

This past Sunday was Music Appreciation Sunday at LCPC and the Romans scripture was read as part of Pastor Wilson’s sermon about Self Control as one of the Fruits of the Spirit and off I ran with reading more of Romans than I have in some time. Self control; I sorely lack it and thus what I do is not what I want to be doing. Putting aside sleeping, eating, working, and home responsibilities I still have hours that I can devote to story telling. My biggest enemy is time wasting and the biggest chunk of that is in front of the TV and then the other are games on my “smart” phone. How can I be saved from myself, or can I? I can, but not by myself or in myself but only through God’s grace can I change patterns that I’ve set up for decades. It doesn’t help that I have such low self-esteem when it comes to writing and believing that it makes a difference making avoidance of failure a favorite pastime. God has not made this directive easy.

My answer came later in Romans 7, good of Paul to provide the answer to the question, no?

Romans 7: 21 – 25 “So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!”

In light of that, I need to do several things:

1 –Believe that I delight in God’s law in my inner being and feed that consistently and the well will not be so dry and I will that much closer to the creative nature of God.

2 – Believe that I am delivered by Jesus Christ and that He continues to deliver me and act like it. Walk away from those things I hate and cling to those things I love.

3 – Don’t be satisfied with token attempts, cry out to God with continued trips to the foot of the cross in search of Calvary’s Thread.

4 – Believe that what I’m doing has merit, even if just to connect myself more firmly to His Grace.

In His grip - jj white

MAZ in the Rear View Mirror

I haven’t written a word to print in weeks, at least four since it was a week or so before Mission Arizona (MAZ) 2012 and it is now two and half weeks after. It seems a lifetime ago that we were frantically painting the last of four brick walls the team built so that we could get on the road, packing strategically so that the truck and trailer with Paul and Jacob could head straight home, and making our way to the wonderfully refurbished church sign for our team photo. Much of the emotional highs of the trip for me have already faded with a couple of weeks of turmoil at the office, two road trips to the north, and a weekend in Santa  Barbara for Teya’s birthday with my parent’s down from Oregon for the festivities. Most of the hardships of the trip filtered away during affirmations while both the kids and adults said things about each other that showed the spotlight on all that was good about this short mission trip and service week; it was like a kalidascope of great aspects of each person. People often ask if I’m going next year after each trip and I always respond that I don’t start thinking about it for at least a month after the highs and lows have evened out to allow for a more objective time of consideration and prayer. I like to draw a parallel for my participation in MAZ to Walter Alston and his tenure with the Dodgers as manager of the team. I understand that he always had a one year contract and met after each season to determine the owner’s satisfaction with his performance and he managed the team for 23 seasons. I have a year to year agreement with God on weather I go and how involved I’ll be. The process will likely be kicked off with this post and last a few months. I have much to do and need to make some significant progress on them before I’ll know for sure.

This trip was full of surprises just as each one of the twenty trips I’ve done; even the one I stayed home on a couple of years ago held a surprise which was the simple fact that I believed He wanted me home that year. This year’s biggest surprise was a dog that I just could not be mean enough to in order to keep it away; the mantel of the stern task oriented timeline driven discipline guy has worn thin. I would much prefer to laugh, play, and goof off with the kids and joke around with all the adults but that role has not been mine to play. This is not to say that I don’t have fun, I have plenty and great memories with a number of very cool kids and friends. Naynay, as the dogs shortened name came to be, was well ensconced with the early group by the time I arrived with the bulk of the team on the Monday following Easter and it was too late to impose the rules of “outside the camp” for the reservation dogs. No petting, feeding, or otherwise fraternizing with the dogs inside our sleeping area is the way I like it so that we can avoid distractions and the keep the specter of an animal coming home with us away. Dashed beyond all recognition was my resolve to stick to the plan and I have to say it must have been God’s plan with Naynay; to what purpose still remains a mystery to me.

We did a lot of work on the reservation at the Vah Ki and Stotonic Presbyterian churches. If you’ll excuse the run on sentence we replaced the floor tiles in both bathrooms, poured a concrete slab equipped with a finished block wall for seating, replaced seven or eight windows in the 1890s adobe church building, broke out bad concrete and re-poured them to make the walkways more usable to the wheel chair and walker-bound folks, installed a drip watering system to two new trees, filled in three sections of a wall to the meeting area to hold back the desert sands, painted over graffiti, restored the church sign with the artful Paige and Delany as primaries and covered it with Plexiglas to protect it from graffiti (brilliant idea Todd), repaired numerous toilets, closed in and added windows to the mud room entrance to the fellowship hall, added another sand barrier to the other entrance to the hall, sanded and painted the floor of the other 1890s adobe church and replaced about fifty feet of eight inch baseboard, cooked a meal and held a mini-VBS for the neighborhood and church folks, and dozens of other little things that escape me now. We did a lot of work and that was all good but the thing that stands out for me as special was the mini-VBS that Ashley Adamson thought of and the impromptu testimony from Kenny, the nineteen year old son of the lead elder from the Stotonic church. After sharing his heartfelt story of how he came to be saved he had each of us share something about ourselves and that was fantastic even if we kept it simple. The exchange between the Pima people and our group that evening was very gratifying. Kenny then presented our kids and adults with some reusable lunch bags with water bottles and a cool logo from an event called “Mul Chu Tha”, running in Pima is the simple translation although there is more depth to it. Then Kenny and his dad, Lenny, presented me with a tee shirt they had from a special event celebrating and depicting the flag raising on Iow Jim with the phrase “Uncommon Valor was a Common Virtue”. As with many American Indian tribes I’ve seen, the Pima deeply honor their veterans; one of their own, Ira Hays, was part of the flag-raising, last in line and closest to the flag itself. I am very humbled by this and feel undeserving since I escaped the horrors of the Viet Nam War by the luck of the draft and did not serve in the armed forces.

I was at MAZ ‘12 with 35 fantastic kids and adults and thought of them often while riding to Sacramento a couple of Saturdays ago. Each of them played a significant role in this trip and it is they who make it worthwhile, their smiles and friendship gave me miles of pleasant riding along Highway 5, a long and boring route for some. I’ll have to make an attempt at listing each one and something special about them in a post. It may not surprise some to hear this next part but most of you will raise an eyebrow to it. As much as I love the Pima people of the Gila River Indian Community and cherish serving them, the biggest reason I can think of for doing this trip are the kids that go. Being a part of the opportunity they have to serve, learn to live in community in adverse conditions, seek God in new and refreshing ways, exposing them to the plight of the poor and disadvantaged, and preparing them for other avenues of service is, for me, the most rewarding aspect of the trip. It is, as it always should be, about them. All right, we can throw in all the advisors into that mix as well since we all are children of God and have much to learn. I’ve run way past my blog post length limit and still have so much to relate…

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Burger King

A couple of Sundays ago Matt, Ashley, and the kids came down from Santa Barbara for a few days at the start of Ashley’s spring break. Part of the plan for Sunday was that some of the family would take in “The Hunger Games”; I hadn’t planned on going but it ended up with Ashley, Lauren, and me. We went early enough to grab something to eat before getting into the long waiting line, something I very rarely do is to wait in line on an opening weekend for a big movie. I am more the “let’s wait a week or two, still see it on the bigger screens but not with the agony of waiting in line” type. On the way through the parking structure directly to the In and Out was a homeless man waiting around for a hand out and not being really overt about his request, if I had my blinders in place I could have, and did actually, walk right by without giving it much thought. While in line Ashley asked if we could add a cheese burger to our order for the man; what’s a dad going to do, say no? What does the Heavenly Father do when his children ask for a way to help somebody? He provides them the way. We added the burger and Ashley made the delivery. I’m very pleased with how my kids are turning out; it is quite a blessing when they show me how compassionate they are, how thoughtful, and how loving they are. It can also be a bit convicting.

Yesterday after my morning swim I decided that a Burger King breakfast was in order since it was just half a block out of my way back to the office. My path down Main Street in Alhambra to the “restaurant” from the LA Fitness took me on the opposite side from a large church whose entryway is used by homeless folks for nights. On the way by I observed a couple of them stirring and thought to myself “I’ll just stay on this side of Main on my way back and cross to office down the way” and I was immediately brought up short. I was the bad guy in the parable of The Good Samaritan, down to the very act of walking down the street on the opposite side so as not to get involved. This is not the first time I’ve wrestled with this conundrum of how to meet a need larger than myself and on this very spot and with coming face to face with the needy. I changed my approach and determined to buy gift coupons to hand to them on my way by except that Burger King sells gift cards instead and so I got one. The signals would have favored the lesser path and I had to push the walk button and wait for the signal change to take myself by them. There are three that morning while usually there are one or two and as I approached one of them was straitening up from being sick in the city flower garden and the area reeked of alcohol confirming my decision to get a gift card over cash. The unfortunate reality is that they’d use the cash for their addiction rather than what they need, food. I hand off the card to one of the men and pat him on the should giving a silent prayer and feeling broken myself rather than good about it; I probably should have dropped off my breakfast as well since there were three men and stuck to the instant oatmeal I keep in my file drawer. I’ve tossed a pebble in the rushing river trying to dam it up.

What are we to do with the homeless and the acute need of the hungry? There are any number of institutional ways of handling it and we participate in them. We have money withheld for “Habitat for Humanity” from my check and that’s good but pretty antiseptic. At LCPC we have a number of efforts underway and we support most of them. We give to the mission trips; the Rosarito Orphanage getting started, Project Dominicana, the Men’s Mexico Trip, and then there is Mission Arizona where we give and I go along and get dirty with the mission team. Our Children’s Ministry group supports the Children’s Hunger Fund as well as a number of other support efforts and our Deacon’s do the Neighbors helping Neighbors as well as supplying a closet full of food and gift cards for families in the area in deep need.

These are all good and worthy efforts to be involved in but I still wrestle with the problem when I come face to face with it. The person who is begging and hungry, standing right in front of me does not want to hear “I give at the office”. What does that do for him? I see a need for me to fundamentally change the way I approach this. First, I cannot purposely avoid the issue by walking on the other side of the street; that is no longer a real option. I need to meet the person and assess the situation for what it is in the moment. If I think that what aid I am equipped to give them is really harm, as in giving cash to the homeless person who has a substance abuse problem, then I need to address them and decline. Secondly, I need to arm myself to give some instant aid if possible perhaps by carrying gift cards/certificates to a local food place for the people I come across. I could even take this a step further and purposely make my way by this church and do a census, buy them all a breakfast and forego my own or delay my own. Thirdly, I could possibly get directly involved with one of the other missions to the poor.

At this point in my post I could let it go for your consideration but I must throw a cautionary tale out for you to think about as well. Last summer Cindy and I were taking a late walk during a weekend away and the street was pretty deserted. A homeless man stopped his cart to allow us to pass by the little bottleneck in the sidewalk and did not seem to be asking for any assistance while simply being polite. I smiled and gave him a nod in recognition of this courtesy as we moved along and we were met with an explosion of emotion from him and a tirade ensued about what I thought was so funny and a rant went on about many unrelated injustices that he’s suffered. This man was mentally and/or emotionally disturbed either as a result of or resulted in his homeless condition.  If any of us determine that we are called in some way to minister to the homeless we need to exercise some caution as to when, where, and how we go about it. The homeless can be desperate and disturbed and we need to be prepared for that and pray for guidance and presence of the Holy Spirit as we go about the Lord’s business. I guess that can be true about most things…

In His Grip - jerry