Monday, April 2, 2012

About LA and Other Nonsense

I've been having a hard time buckling down and getting anything done lately. It's because I've been feeling a little like this:


and this:
some of this:
and a lot of this:
oh, and a little more of this:
and definitely this:
but this seems to help:
Baking and eating desserts seems to be one of the few things I CAN get done. Also pacing and wasting time. And reading the Hunger Games Trilogy.

Okay, I am exaggerating a little but only a little.

Life's just a little up in the air right now.

And I'm saying little a lot.

But I did want to recap our Spring Break trip to L.A....it's just been hard to think of how to communicate the essence of what the trip meant to me without writing pages and pages...because I really would like to be more brief. And thinner. I'm just sayin'.

So, I'm not going to post a million pictures or give a play-by-play of the trip (but I'll post the link to the video/slideshow I made, which says everything I want to say in it anyway and it includes music from an old favorite band of mine called Skypark, so you should watch it). To summarize, we had fun, served people, listened to their stories, ate lots of yummy ethnic food, accidentally saw a red carpet event in Hollywood, and had our eyes opened to God's heart for cities and the people in cities...for humanity.

We served at missions that are doing so much to offer help and hope to the people on the streets, yet I was overwhelmed with compassion for some of the people that really had so many things stacked against them...homelessness, health problems, disabilities, no teeth, disfigurements. I would think, "Even if they committed to one of the programs at the missions and got cleaned up and fed, what could they do? What do they have to offer?" In a way, deep down inside, I was thinking What is their life really worth? It felt wonderful to touch them and look them in the eyes and even laugh as we sang karaoke together on Skid Row, but what could I really do for them?


I loved the people that we met. I loved Mohammad, who didn't have many teeth and was in a wheelchair on the streets and who said his father was the 3rd president of Somalia (which I believe, actually...long story there), and Warren who was down and out but clear and sober and really only wanted a Bible (but we got the man a Snickers and cold Coke, too) and I imagined him cleaned up and shaved and sitting at our dining room table as a friend. There were the fun ladies I danced with at karaoke who called me "Arizona" and the lady named Angel with the fake eyelashes, stiletto heels, and skin tight neon green shirt that took offering at the church on Skid Row. I mean, it doesn't get more real than that! But I was surprised by the compassion I also felt for the busy, important people in the financial district that walked and talked with so much power and confidence and yet were probably still lost in sin and despair, they just hid it better than the folks who live on the sidewalks outside their skyscrapers and loft apartments.

One of our days out on the streets, we passed by a woman who looked a little like the lady who cries "Bow to the queen of filth and slime" in the Princess Bride. She was yelling at invisible people and had a notebook that she was writing in. Later, Jeremy's team sat and talked with her for a while and found out that she believed she was preventing Armageddon through her good deeds--rows and rows of circles she had drawn on pages and pages of her notebooks. Good deeds in the form of circles written on a page were going to save the world, all on her shoulders.


The next afternoon, we served at the Midnight Mission which serves up to a thousand meals a day to the homeless and offers many rehabilitation programs for the men of Skid Row. While we were there, we met a group of women in their 50s that were volunteering as well...they were friends from a Jazzercize class in Pasadena (a MUCH nicer area of LA). Jeremy was working with some of the Jazzercize group (chopping cucumbers, go Jeremy) and I was working with another one of them. She ended up telling me that the reason they come to the Mission is that one of the women is dying of cancer (Jeremy was working and talking with her the most, unaware of her condition) and, according to the doctors, was already past the time they expected her to die. It was her dying wish to volunteer more, so her friends from exercise class said they would come with her. It was so noble and sweet and sad all at the same time. As she was telling me this, Jeremy was talking about oh you know, the casual topic of death and the meaning of life with the woman who was dying. She said that it was "good" that the homeless have "faith" because it "helps" them in their hard life, it's something that the poor can feel good about. He was challenging her and her friends that if it is good for the poor, shouldn't it be good for the rich, and shouldn't we all take death and the meaning of life seriously because we are all going to die. He later admitted he wouldn't have pushed so hard on those things if he had known she was dying, but we all agreed that something special had happened there in that kitchen and we prayed for her...that God could help her see that her good deeds were as effective as the homeless woman's circles in her notebook and that she could come to know the hope that anyone, rich or poor, has of life with no more tears after death if they trust in Jesus.

Our final night, we went up to Griffith Observatory on the hills above LA (near the HOLLYWOOD sign) to talk about our week.
Our leader, Emily, read to us the story of Jesus weeping over Jerusalem, a city not unlike Los Angeles during Jesus' days on earth. I love the city because Jesus loves the city.

Jeremy talked about the story Jesus told of a man who had a banquet and all of his distinguished guests were too busy or too important to come, so the man sent out his servants to the streets to bring in the poor and crippled and blind and lame to fill the table. My mind could easily picture who those people were...the people we had just interacted with all week.

We closed with the verses from the Bible where at the end of the age, Jesus separates those he knows from those he doesn't, saying to those he knows: "I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me...as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me." Those lives about which I wondered What are they worth? are precious because He gives them value...and calls them his brothers. I don't totally understand it, but I love it--that if I want to see Jesus, I should serve the poor, who have no way of giving anything in return (Luke 14:13-14). And I guess that's an even bigger picture I saw in our week in Inner City LA...a glimpse of how God sees us...naked, poor, helpless, with nothing to offer, dead really, and He turns around and gives us life, value, meaning, love, and beauty through His Son. It's enough to make me cry. Again.

1 comment:

  1. This was a wonderful thing to read. It almost made me feel like I was there. I so want to minister in this capacity. Thank you for sharing, it was very encouraging.

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