On love & neighbor (passing a bum)

That's chapter one of Stan Gaede's book, An Incomplete Guide to the Rest of Your Life. An excellent book by an excellent man. I recommend it. Living in Pittsburgh, I find myself with more opportunities to see and live what Stan wrote about. 

I was walking along Forbes Avenue this afternoon, an interesting place with a lot of shops, a lot of cars, and a lot of people. Mostly students, but all sorts of people. One man caught my attention. Forty or fifty years old, dirty, long scruffy hair and beard, a coat, no shirt, threadbare pants, bare feet.

That man was my neighbor. Never seen him before, maybe never see him again, but as I saw him this afternoon, he was my neighbor. And turns out Jesus had something to say about neighbors. Something that continuously transforms this broken world. Not a something born of evolution, nor of the culture around me. But something about love. And, despite my best efforts, I keep finding that love works. Love is not God, but God is love.

So what can I do for something like this man I saw today? Maybe a little, maybe a lot. I don't know all his needs (though I don't need to), though I can guess a few. Food. Warmth. Conversation. Eye contact. The freedom to live his humanity. Stan describes him this way:

"A man who cannot repay me. Who doesn't know me from Adam. But is of Adam. Who may indeed squander what I have given him, and thereby replicate the way I squander God's gifts to me almost every day. But who will, at least for a moment, see Jesus in action, whether he knows it or not. And so will I."

"Whatever you did for one of the least of these,...you did for me."

And today, today I failed to do something for Jesus. And I failed the man on the street. So I am grateful for forgiveness, and I look forward to next time.