Robert Massey stood in front of nearly 500 teens and adults from Virginia Methodist Churches. He stopped in the middle of detailing homeless life and blurted out, “Homelessness sucks!” The crowd erupted into applause. He had their attention.
Robert is still homeless and has been for 17 years. He made a lot of mistakes and experienced a lot of emotional pain that, through the grace of a renewed relationship with Jesus Christ, is fading. He shares his experience with churches and other groups through Teens Opposing Poverty’s Homelessness in the First Person program.
After sharing the mind-numbing monotony and dehumanizing experiences of homeless life, Robert looked out over the crowd of young faces and told them they could be a bright spot for someone who is struggling in life. He told them how much it meant for somebody to smile at him, listen to him, talk with him and just treat him like a human being.
Be a bright spot. It doesn’t have to be a big thing. It can be as simple as looking somebody in the eye and saying hello, or buying a homeless person something to eat besides peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. It can be listening to a lonely elderly person share how things used to be or tossing a football around with homeless people who have taken up residence in a park. It can be getting to know someone who is very different from you well enough to call them your friend.
These seemingly small things are huge to someone who struggles to hold onto the shreds of human dignity that are constantly being stripped away by a cold system. Everything that is designed to help people defeat the monsters that hold them in poverty works better when love is added to it.
Be a bright spot for somebody today. Do small things with large love and make a big difference.
God’s grace to you,
Steve Jennings, Executive Director