Grace is Hard

Often I get told that one of the chief reasons more people do not help with the homeless is that they feel the homeless do not deserve it. For example, I have had people tell me they won’t help feed the homeless because they feel the homeless should get jobs. I have had others tell me they will not donate clothes because they feel people should take responsibility for their own lives.

I can’t fault their feeling that way. Often, I feel that way myself. You spend your days striving to help someone, help them build the beginnings of a life, give them your time, your attention, your money, your love and they don’t change. You reach a point where you know that no matter what you do for this person, they will not change. No matter how much you help them, they will never be a ‘productive’ member of society.

You mentor a kid for months, see the light in their eyes, feel genuine love for them and they get arrested for selling crack. Someone you have a strong relationship with asks you for $20 so they can get their ID from the DMV and you find out they buy crack with it. You fight with the powers that be to get someone into a rehab program, only to have them voluntarily leave after 4 days to go back to using. You watch someone go from 37 sober days to 4 sober days to 7 sober days to 6 sober hours.

It will break your heart. Loving people is not easy, especially people that do not want to love you back. Fighting for someone who will probably not change is exhausting. So, you may ask, why do it?

Simply this: Grace. That the God of the universe loves me unconditionally, without reservation and passionately wants to enter into a relationship with me makes no sense whatsoever. Yet, this is what we see in the message and life of Jesus of Nazareth. He told us to love each other, as He loved us. We should love people when it makes no sense to because He loved us when it makes no sense for Him to.

You know what? They do not deserve my help, my attention or my love. But then again, I do not deserve His, either. Thank God I do not get that which I deserve. If I cry over the injustice I see, mourn for the babies born to crackhead mothers, and weep over the rejection I feel when they refuse my overtures, it helps me to sense the merest hint of the pain God must feel when we refuse His love.

Photo courtesy of WiseDoc.

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