RELIGION | GOVERNMENT | SELF IMPROVEMENT | LIFE | PSYCHOLOGY
Metropolitan Nomads in America
Their stories are very different, yet very much the same throughout the ages.
Take a trip downtown in any large metropolitan city and you are bound to see them. They are the ever-present homeless, the neglected, lost citizens of the United States.
They exist in the seedy shadows of America, pitching tents on the sidewalks, under overpasses, sleeping on park benches — you name it, they are there. They are demeaned and downtrodden.
Like illegal aliens, they are treated as second-class citizens in a first-class nation — or worse, as if they were all druggies, or thieves-of-the-night, intent on physically harming us.
For whatever reason(s), they have found themselves homeless, something that some of them never dreamed would happen to them. The reasons for their homelessness are diverse and have truly unbelievable stories behind them.
Our nation’s leaders and we, its citizens, grapple with how to deal with their growing numbers and how to provide them with the basic services needed to help them continue to exist — food, shelter, restroom facilities, bathing facilities, and health care, to name a few.
These are all necessary to help establish a person’s own personal worth and value. Those of us who have access to these daily services sometimes overlook their importance in our lives.
For those of us who have these conveniences frequently available to us, we tend to take them for granted.
What would Jesus do?
We often ask ourselves how to address the needs of the poor and the meek. How do we provide for them when they need so much?
I believe our Lord, Jesus Christ, provided us with the framework for finding the answer:
Now when he saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to Him, and He began to teach them, saying:
