When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled.
– John 11:33
Yesterday the staff set up a large, dirt-floored tent where they created a street of ‘No Hope”. Once inside the darkened tent, the smell of rotten trash, sweat and urine fill the scorching hot room, overwhelming the senses.
The heavy-metal music blares at a fevered pitch. The screams coming at you from all sides. Your eyes can barely adjust to the darkness.
Pandemonium ensues.
Tripping over a wretched, filthy soul crying on the ground in front you, you see a girl casually smoking a joint and the smell of reefer fills your nostrils.
You feel someone pulling at your pants legs. Screaming for help, the battered woman is looking into your eyes as her husband beats her mercilessly, grabbing her hair, dragging her back into the drunken rage that has given him reason to unleash this evil.
You get pushed from all sides. Out of the corner of your eye you now notice the hooker.
She beckons you to draw near, but someone close is wailing so loud that you must look.
There in the midst of the filth she is drawn up into a ball.
A tortured soul crying out to no one and yet to everyone.
A few feet away another homeless tramp.
She is disgusting.
Nasty torn clothes, she reeks of urine, her hair is crusty, her eyes blackened.
No time for this one.
She is too real.
You’ve seen her kind before on the streets and just turned away.
You easily do it again.
But yet another figure is there before you, preparing to commit suicide.
Lonely and desperate she is crying, her hands grasping the pills that can take her out of this misery.
You reach down to touch her.
The blaring music, the stench, the screams, it’s too much.
You’re shoved again.
You are outside the tent.
But you are now the tortured one.
What just happened?
Why do you want to go back in?
What do you have to offer?
Why are the tears rolling down your face?
You have heard or seen all it before, but it never touched you like this.
Could it be real?
Is this the hopelessness that we pass everyday?
Should we cry for them?
Do I really want to feel their pain? Do I really want to share their pain?
Jesus does. His spirit is moved. He is troubled. Are you?
