The Elephant in The Room

Janelle is a lady who is sleeping on the sidewalk next to where Lilly parks her car in the Men's shelter parking lot.  Her significant other could get a bed in the shelter but he refuses to leave her so he sleeps next to her on the sidewalk.  I commend him for that because I have seen many who go into the shelter and leave their wives or girlfriends outside alone. Janelle has a CDL license and is capable of working if she can find a few resources or someone just willing to take the time to help her.

 They have NO single woman shelters here and that is unacceptable. Whats even more unacceptable is that we have 3-4 woman shelters for abused women or women with children and a church on every corner. Big churches and little churches and Janelle sleeping on the sidewalk. Someone PLEASE explain that to me. I will tell you that a church did offer to put them in a hotel for 2 nights. After the first night they left, do to the fact that a roach crawled on her while she was trying to sleep and they could barely rest with all the drug activity going on around them. Janelle said her boyfriend got fed up and they left and it was the comment he made that struck me to my deepest core.

He said "A church should know better than that." AMEN BROTHER! Absolutely they should know better because if you are a representation of Christ and church is looked upon as a safe haven than surely you can do better than the crack alley roach hotel. AND if you don't have the fruit and the funds to back up your intentions maybe its because you treat Jesus the same way. Maybe its because you serve Jesus out of a dirty pot.  We wonder why people have lost  faith and don't trust the 4 wall  church anymore. I mean seriously if you cant trust the church who can you trust right?
 We wonder why people don't want to go to church when people walk into a building that has a fantastic state of the art sound system, a coffee bar in their foyer and a sanctuary the size of the grand canyon but can't or won't find the resources to put a single woman with no husband, AKA modern day widow, up in a decent hotel as apposed to the sidewalk.

Oh and here's a thought maybe just offer her a spare bedroom . Surely someone in a 1300 person congregation has one. My guess is you will find the poorest of the poor to  be the first to offer up  a sofa before you will find anyone in a large church who has to have 2 dreams , a vision and 6 confirmations from God before they would even consider getting uncomfortable enough to step out in that kind of selflessness. Don't get me wrong there are those who are kind and generous and who  wouldn't hesitate,  but very few.

So why is that? What are we so afraid of ? Lets just confront the "Elephant in the Room". People don't really want to host someone in there home for several reasons .One, they don't want to be bothered or put out, they have there own families to worry about. Two, they will give and serve but don't want strangers living in their home and they allow fear of the unknown to  paralyze them into not moving in Gods will instead of trusting that the Holy Spirit is there protector. Its called dicernment. Three, people don't want to step outside of their comfort zone , they think everyone was called to partake in Christs suffering accept them.

Fourth , My all time favorite "I would have to pray about it " or "I am not called to that." or "Its just not the right timing. " Well all I have to say about that is  Isaiah 58 clearly squashes the first two excuses and you know when the right time is to give up your spare bedroom and your privacy ? When someone is sleeping on the sidewalk in front of the men's shelter.

- Janelle and our volunteer coordinator / prayer warrior, Mandy Woodhouse