Sandwiches and their shortcomings

In all their suffering he also suffered,
     and he personally rescued them.
In his love and mercy he redeemed them.
     He lifted them up and carried them
     through all the years.  --Isaiah 63:9

Some Mondays it's hard to find the poetry.  People start trickling into my house around 7:30pm; we linger and chat and laugh; make sandwiches, bag sandwiches, bag the bags of sandwiches; pray in the musty basement; flock towards the subway, flock towards the concourse, flock towards the park.  Everything fits snugly into this little schedule.

I used to have a heart for this ministry.  I went because I couldn't not go.  I couldn't argue anything else to be more important.

The other day, I was talking to a brother who's very passionate about social justice in this city.  He went on and on about how this was wrong and that was wrong and that if he could he'd do this or stop that... He called me back to myself, two years ago, to the idealist freshman who sincerely thought the consistency of sandwiches could save people.

I haven't completely abandoned this idealism, but now my heart has been joined by my head.  Sandwiches do not save people.  Routines do not save people.  Not even programs or funds or governments or people save people.  Because we have all that, in all its bureaucratic abundance, but the homeless still live underground and the hopeless still look for something to believe in.

If Diakonos has shown me anything, it's that we're all suffering.  Yours isn't worse than mine; it all sucks.  Race, age, gender, height, occupation-- doesn't matter.  We're all stuck.

And if this ministry affirms anything, it's that there's only one way out: Love.  Not mine.  Not yours.  Not theirs.  But His.