New Friends (and Hope) Along the Way

This Saturday morning was yet another great day in a pretty cool week. My friend Mike and I headed to a part of Ft. Worth known as a hang-out for many of the city’s homeless people. It’s become the hub largely because three prominent shelters are all within a block of each other and because many churches come to the area to drop off food. “What part would God want us to play on Saturday mornings?” we wondered.

On what seemed a whim, my friend Mike struck up a conversation with some younger folks [1][2] who were obviously there to serve [3]. Turns out they were in close contact with a local church [4] in that neighborhood and came down every Saturday morning to build relationships and work towards longer-term solutions that many folks who brought food weren’t touching.

For the next three hours we hung out talking about the local situation, made new friends on the street, joined in on some impromptu singing, planned a mini-jam session next week, met their adopted grandpa in the woods and talked more with him and other friends over late breakfast. Who knows what next Saturday will hold, but we’re stoked. God is moving and I think we’re starting to get some glimpses of it.

I’ve blogged many times about the concept of “hope” and what it actually means. In a world marked with struggle, it can be an elusive thing. Perhaps we need to get our hands a bit more dirty and live life among hurting people more often to see hope played out. Perhaps God’s hope isn’t fully tangible unless we go to places where the pretension of “I’m fine” are dropped and we all admit the struggle that life really is, even in Christ.