I gave a sandwich to a homeless woman tonight and it didn’t matter.

She had homelessness in her eyes and while a sandwich maybe startled her melancholy, it didn’t change those eyes and what they know to be true. They were so deep, wells of resignation and anguish. And how do I singlehandedly pull her out? And how do I descend with her?

But I just gave her a sandwich and her name is Ernestine.

\\

I care so much about Home, yet I think so rarely about those who have no such reality. They are even starkly labeled by that thing they lack. It becomes entirely who they are to everyone else, and maybe to themselves. How little this does justice to who they are – how one dimensional and shallow a name, yet how profound and hopeless still.

It says too much and too little.

There is work to be done in this realm that overwhelms me with its vastness. This realm of homelessness, like a knot with all its complications and links that are hard to trace, like a knot with strings that unravel and break before you can solve it. There is work here, and yet – peace, friends. For though we are to meet the needs of the needy, yet Jesus first met the deepest need and became, Himself, their Home. Our Home.

He offered Himself as our shelter and protection from the wrath that sin necessitates. No matter where you live, we’re all on equal footing there; no one shelters themselves, but grace is given.

\\

Oh what anguish abounds, Ernestine, what discomfort to endure when you have no home, no place to rest your head and your bones. No place for renewal and feasting, for gathering and for knitting together. To thrive without this is impossible.

But. Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.¹ There is one who came to settle the knot, to settle the debt. He endured the very same as you, as me. And we rejected Him, we contested Him. And then He loved us still and gave us Himself for our renewal, for our fullness. And I don’t know how to pull anyone out of any well, but Jesus can do what a sandwich could never. He can fill to the brim and then some, and He can rescue in such a permanent way.

First, my soul, recall that you too were without a home, and then Jesus fed you and He keeps you still.

Remember, and do ye likewise.²

He regards the prayer of the destitute
    and does not despise their prayer.³

1 … Luke 9:58

2 … Matthew 25:35

3 … Psalm 102:17