“Homelessness is not a problem. There are economic, starvation, drug, and alcoholic problems which could lead to homelessness. Homelessness, however, is the result of multiple problems.”
I think it was during January, someone from Messiah College asked me to write something about homelessness. I asked her where my essay would be posted. She said “the toilet booths around the campus.” I thought it was great; therefore, wrote a 500 words short essay about homelessness. The quote above is the sentence I concluded my essay with which I will belabor throughout this journal.
Maybe I am not an expert on Homelessness. I do not care if I am or not. Why? Because what I care is the homelessness not my expertise or title on it. Because I care about homelessness, I would like to jot down some of my thoughts based on my year long observation (strictly less than a year).
From my experiences with the homeless people, I was able to realize what the quote means. There is no one solution to homelessness and we need to take care of each person with love. Since homelessness is not a one simple thing that can be approached in one way, we need many different types of people. We will need economists, social workers, doctors, and so on to cure homelessness. However, there is a something that is most dire to be fixed.
Biggest “problem” I saw from the homelessness is devoid of love. People are scared of the homeless and in some extreme cases, people abominate the homeless. Sometimes, even non-profit organizations treat the homeless like pets they have to train.
Often times, we call the Bible “The book of love.” Love, indeed, is the gist of the Bible. The Bible teaches us to love each other as Christ did. In my personal opinion, God left us a huge assignment in which we have to apply the lesson from the Bible – homelessness. To make all these jargons simpler, the Bible is saying that it is a Christian duty to help the homeless with love.
I have seen people who say “I don’t feel like I am called to help the homeless.” I believe that you need to be called to be a social worker, doctor, engineer or accountant. You would not be able to be any of those unless you have some sort of talent in each area. But, helping with homelessness is beyond just being called. We call ourselves Christians. If the term Christian means people who live like the Christ, the love, should not loving others (helping the homeless) be part of our daily lives?
From today, I ask you to show your love to the homeless “personally” so that they know you care. They are the ones who need love. You do not need to go to Africa or Central America to find the weak and poor people. Go out now and talk to a homeless person. Buy the person a meal! Build a friendship with the person. I am not asking you to do something extra; I am simply asking you to start living like Christians.
Issac Won
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