The other night, after a very long day, I found myself lost in a part of town you don’t want to be in after dark in Dallas. I wasn’t there for any unscrupulous reason, but merely turned around in an unfamiliar area while trying to get a simple two-cheeseburger combo meal to a homeless man sitting on an off-ramp.
I’d pass the man a few times recently and each time, felt a nudge to go to the nearby McDonald’s and buy him a meal. Each time, when I got to the drive-thru, I looked back up the interstate and it just didn’t seem like an easy path back to where the gentleman was sitting. So, I’d go home. And it would bother me.
Lately, God has been nudging me to do a lot of things I don’t normally do. He’s been nudging me to step into spiritual environments and atmospheres I used to avoid at all costs. But every time I have stepped outside of my comfort zone, I’ve encountered God.
Just a few weeks ago, I found myself in another encounter with a homeless person – this time a woman whom approached a friend I had just dropped off where their car was parked. The woman asked for some money and my friend offered to buy her a meal, but I could tell she did not feel safe going alone to a nearby fast food place. I said I would go with them and parked the car. As I walked toward the lady, something came over me and I reacted to her as if I would any other person I’d met for the first time. I extended my hand, placed my other hand on her shoulder and said “Hi, I’m Mike. What’s your name?” She looked up and grabbed my hand and told me “My friends call me Abbie.” I said, “Well then, Abbie it is.”
We walked together and chatted briefly on the way to buy her dinner. She told us how she hated to be homeless and ask for food, but she believed God had a reason and she tried to mention Him to every person that spoke to her. I remember telling her that it may not look like it, but I was just as homeless as her in many ways and have had to rely on others to help me during rough times – even recently needing someone to literally buy me a meal when funds were not available.
I did not think much about it, but someone I had shared the moment with pointed out what I failed to see myself at the time. He said, “You know, it wasn’t buying her that meal that made a difference to her that night. It was the fact you touched her and related to her.” Honestly, I had not even thought twice about it until then and I realized that God had created that moment and led me how to respond.
The same thing happened with the homeless man the other night. As usual, the thought occurred to me to buy him a meal as I passed him on the exit. When I got to the McDonald’s, I looked back and there was the familiar unclear path of how to get back to him. But, this time, the nudge was strong and I felt like God wanted me to skip the dinner I was going to eat at home and buy this man dinner. So, I did. And, of course, I got lost on the way back to find him.
A few turns here and there thinking I was heading back the right way and I was only further deep in a really bad part of town. Going down a two-way street which construction had made one-way, I was head on with an SUV. I stopped, backed up, and parked to the side. As the SUV slowly passed buy, music that could have been the soundtrack for any L.A. gang movie blared. They slowly passed and I just kept thinking, “Why do I have to through all of this just to get this guy a cheeseburger?!”
After a few more times around the exit ramps, I found him and gave him the meal. And that was that.
The next morning, as I waited for the guys in my weekly discipleship group to arrive, I wondered if I should share both of those stories. I didn’t want to because I felt like it would come across as an effort to pat myself on the back for “doing a good deed.” I prayed that God would reveal to me if I was to share the experiences and if so, why.
It was during the study that I felt led to go ahead and talk about it in light of what I was sharing that morning. As I spoke, the message truly emerged on the spot. The guys in the group have known some areas in my life that were current struggles, mostly centered on worldly needs to accomplish what I felt God was leading me to do. I had been deep in prayer for months that God would provide and that He would pass before me and show me who He had made me to be and reveal Himself in new and powerful ways.
It dawned on me. Weeks earlier, God was saying, “You are asking me to acknowledge you and pass before you, will you acknowledge my daughter?” Soon after that, God did reveal Himself to me in a new way. The other night, He was saying, “You are asking me to provide for you and feed you – will you feed my son?”
I realized that my experience getting lost trying to simply help a stranger was much like what happens to Him all the time with us. Except we’re not strangers – we’re His children. But don’t we send God down dark alleys with our fear, worry, sin and doubt all the time? Don’t we sometimes delay what He wants to give us because we make it hard for Him to get to us by not seeking Him and hiding behind walls that make it difficult to be found?
When we truly ask, seek and knock, are we not expected to reflect Christ to others in the same way we desire Him to reflect on us? And isn’t the best way to reflect God to find out more about Him by stepping into new experiences where He is present?
Sometimes, we put God through quite the ordeal when He just wants to hand us a cheeseburger as we hunger.
(Formerly posted in 2005 under a blog titled “LightHouse”)
