Have we met?
I look a lot like you.
I have good days and bad days.
Lately more bad days than I care to admit.
Yesterday I played ball in the park with my kids,
I know they smelled your burgers on the grill.
I know full well it's my job to fill their bellies,
but I cannot compete with the men in wrinkle free suits
who arrive for the same interviews as I.
I wouldn't hire me.
I did shave this morning, but the blades getting so dull...
I always wondered what the homeless were like.
Now I have learned to be homeless is to have
the doors of opportunity close in your face.
To play ball until dark with your children, then
call them all closely to you beneath the trees in
the park only to be roused from a fitful sleep and to be told
to move on, yet never told to where...
Often it is to desire to work but have no way to compete
with the smudge proof resume, and the women and men
with shower, suit, tie and comb applying for the same
position you must have to achieve these things.
It is not to be looked at, but looked over.
To have your heart break, as your child quietly licks his lips,
while another child passes licking an ice cream cone.
It is to ask for help, and be told...
to help yourself,
then walk on wondering how to do that?
It is having everything, a roof, food, heat and a job.
Then to survive a life changing storm,
caused by death, illness, pink slips, economy, fire, flood,
or other endless possibilities, just one able
to sweep it all away in a moment.
Being homeless is best defined as:
Having it all "yesterday",
and today having nothing remaining except:
Faith,
and a Hope that the God of love
will show forth in His people.
I look a lot like you.
I have good days and bad days.
Lately more bad days than I care to admit.
Yesterday I played ball in the park with my kids,
I know they smelled your burgers on the grill.
I know full well it's my job to fill their bellies,
but I cannot compete with the men in wrinkle free suits
who arrive for the same interviews as I.
I wouldn't hire me.
I did shave this morning, but the blades getting so dull...
I always wondered what the homeless were like.
Now I have learned to be homeless is to have
the doors of opportunity close in your face.
To play ball until dark with your children, then
call them all closely to you beneath the trees in
the park only to be roused from a fitful sleep and to be told
to move on, yet never told to where...
Often it is to desire to work but have no way to compete
with the smudge proof resume, and the women and men
with shower, suit, tie and comb applying for the same
position you must have to achieve these things.
It is not to be looked at, but looked over.
To have your heart break, as your child quietly licks his lips,
while another child passes licking an ice cream cone.
It is to ask for help, and be told...
to help yourself,
then walk on wondering how to do that?
It is having everything, a roof, food, heat and a job.
Then to survive a life changing storm,
caused by death, illness, pink slips, economy, fire, flood,
or other endless possibilities, just one able
to sweep it all away in a moment.
Being homeless is best defined as:
Having it all "yesterday",
and today having nothing remaining except:
Faith,
and a Hope that the God of love
will show forth in His people.
