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 his past weekend, two of my good friends (Raborn and Tom) and I got together for breakfast at Hardee’s. We try to get together on a weekly basis, but sometimes schedules make that difficult. This particular weekend, we settled on Sunday morning because that was the only time that would work for all three of us.
Our breakfast times together (Raborn and I have been meeting weekly for over 14 months, and Tom just recently started joining us) are often quite interesting times of discussing what the Lord is teaching us, or exploring questions we have about simple church, etc. Normally, we have another “regular” place that we meet, but decided to meet at Hardee’s this particular day. As we waited in line to order, we commented about the “before church rush”. It was pretty apparent from the clothes being worn by most of the people ahead of us that they were grabbing a bite to eat before heading to their respective church services. Sure enough, by about an hour into our conversation, the place was pretty empty, and we were enjoying lively conversation back in the corner. I hadn’t even noticed a man who came and sat down a couple of booths over from us. Nor did I even think of how our conversation could easily be heard. We were too busy discussing things to think about it. This week, our conversation turned to the subject of helping the poor and the homeless who we come across. We were discussing the common objections like, “They’ll just spend the money on alcohol and cigarettes” — I’m sure you know the mindset I’m talking about. In the course of this conversation, I shared about experiences I had while living in Austin, TX….
There in Austin, the street-corners of busy intersections usually have people holding cardboard signs, looking for food or money or work. For several years of living there, I just ignored them. But they were everywhere. One day, I was sitting in church listening to a sermon about reaching people. The thrust of the preacher’s sermon was all about inviting people to that church. In fact, he was telling the church about how there were piles of “tracts” available at the front for us to hand out. These tracts contained nothing except a map to the church and a list of service times. My mind began to wander away from the marketing speech that was being given, and I began to seek the Lord’s direction. I prayed, “Lord, I do long to reach people. How can I do that? What can I do to make a difference in the lives of others?” You know, it’s funny how sometimes the Lord really does speak quite clearly to us. I say “funny” because a lot of people don’t think that the Lord still speaks. But in this instance, I knew that I was hearing from the Lord. He said, “You could help the people on the corners of the intersections.” At this time in my life, I had a rather well-paying job, and had surplus to give to others. But I was puzzled by this idea. I immediately began to think through all the justifications I had held onto as to why I should not give money to “those people”. I had seen a news special one time (when I was living in Philadelphia) about how some of “those people” were making really good money on the streets. I saw them all as scam artists. Or drug users. Or alcoholics. Surely, God didn’t want me to enable that kind of behavior, right? And that’s when the Lord put something in my heart that I had never considered before. He said, “What they do with your gift is between me and them. But if I want you to give, you should obey me.” I left that conversation with a far different perspective. And for the rest of my time in Austin, whenever I would pull up to a traffic light and see someone on the corner, I would ask the Lord if I should give to them. The direction often varied. Sometimes it was, “Empty your wallet”. I might have $20 or $40 or more in my wallet, and I would just take it all out and give it to them. Other times it was, “Pull into the next convenience store, buy them a sandwich and something to drink and take it back to them.” And I would do that, circling back around to roll down my window and hand them a meal. Sometimes, the direction was to not give anything at all.
The three of us at breakfast were discussing this way of thinking when the man we had not noticed stood up to leave. He turned around, walked straight to our booth, and said, “Gentlemen, you give me hope!” And then he went on to say, “I’m not a Christian” but shared how the conversation he had been overhearing gave him hope. I don’t remember all the precise words he said, but the two statements that I remember word-for-word are, “Gentlemen, you give me hope” and “I’m not a Christian”. The conversation didn’t last long, and he shook our hands and left. But we remained, praising God that we had been able to sow some seed of hope into his life. The opportunity wasn’t there in the conversation to take it any further, but I believe we did exactly what God wanted us to do. Who knows how that seed will be watered by someone else? Think about it: We normally don’t meet on Sundays. We normally don’t go to Hardee’s. The “regular church crowd” had already gone. But God used us in that place, at that time, to give someone hope. Praise the Lord! Until next time, steve 
Original content by: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TheologicalMusings/~3/104730826/.
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