Meet Jim

I spent the last part of tonight hanging out with a man named Jim. Jim has fallen on some tough times-- his girlfriend of 4 years, whom he lived with in Vermont, recently committed suicide. He's been ostracized by his family and neighborhood. Just tonight, he was robbed of most of his worldly posessions. Jim is currently homeless.

I was playing ball with some of the youth, when Jim walked into the ball court area. He stood around watching. I thought, hmm.... I should probably ask him to move along so he doesn't scare the kids. As I introduced myself, and he introduced himself, we found that we had Vermont in common. Gradually, Jim started talking about his girlfriend, Lisa, who had had a drug and alcohol addiction up until she overdosed and killed herself a few weeks ago.

When Jim got to that part of the story, my heart grew heavy. We ended up spending the next hour and a half talking about the messes in his old life, the cruelty of the modern city, street culture, and humanity's inherent sinfuless. That sort of led him to ask me to read him something from the Bible. It's times like that when I wish I had verses memorized. The best I could do was read him Romans 8-- one of my favorite chapters. I also paraphrased Jesus' "Come to me all you who are weary and heavy laden... my yoke is easy and my burden is light."

After that, Jim started talking about how he believes God put him in our church parking lot at the right time to hear those words. There was a lot of just sitting in silence-- and because he was homeless and had nowhere to shower or anything, he kept on moving and squirming-- he was itchy all over. In the end, I prayed for him and he asked me for a Bible to read.

I wanted to give him some detailed information about Boston Rescue Mission, but I didn't know anything about them. Jim says that he'll come to church on Sunday for worship and that he will try to find nice clothes for the occasion. If I see him, I'll give him the information then.

Tonight, the Lord opened my eyes to the plight of people-- how possible it is for a normal somebody to fall into homelessness. Please say a quick prayer for Jim when you read this-- that he would find peace in a relationship with Jesus Christ, and that the Lord would pick Jim back up and take him out of homelessness.