You know that feeling after you've just been shopping and spent to much? It's like a rock hitting the glass lake and sinking to the bottom. You know that you've broken something. The budget, your promise to stop using your credit card, your shoe rack when you add these new pumps. I had that feeling today. It wasn't crazy sale shopping where you buy 5 tops you're never going to wear just cause they're on sale. I bought runners (ew! First pair in about 5 years - but they're pink and Nike and my Zumba instructor wears them, so they must be cool) and wedding presents (times 2!)
On my way back to work, I walked through Hyde Park. The Red Cross clad clan guard the entrance, vying for my attention, which I did not have time to give. Head down, headphones in, no eye contact. My hands were full with my purchases, and my hat attempting to fly off my head, when a pair of bare feat caught my attention. A straggly man was sitting alone on a bench, gazing down. I recognised him. He comes into our outreach cafe some days. I smiled, said hello, and asked him how he was. He bore back a toothless grin and said alright. I bid him farewell, saying, "see you at the cafe sometime soon".
What I wish I could've done was give him my new shoes, returned the gifts, bought him a yummy Oporto burger, and made sure he was sleeping somewhere other then the bushes tonight. Unfortunately I just kept walking, straight back into my job where I raise money for the homeless people of Sydney. Could I live a more contradictory life?
I will forever straddle this line between consumer and giver. I will forever live a juxtaposed life, between being the hands of Jesus and being the feet of the accuser. I will lay down my coat as a sacrifice, only to pick up another, perhaps more expensive, at the cost of another's well being.
Maybe that rock needs to continue to sink. And when that glass surface reappears, more need to break it. Life is a process of brokenness. Of never becoming so satisfied and whole, that we are blind to the man with bare feet in the middle of winter.
On my way back to work, I walked through Hyde Park. The Red Cross clad clan guard the entrance, vying for my attention, which I did not have time to give. Head down, headphones in, no eye contact. My hands were full with my purchases, and my hat attempting to fly off my head, when a pair of bare feat caught my attention. A straggly man was sitting alone on a bench, gazing down. I recognised him. He comes into our outreach cafe some days. I smiled, said hello, and asked him how he was. He bore back a toothless grin and said alright. I bid him farewell, saying, "see you at the cafe sometime soon".
What I wish I could've done was give him my new shoes, returned the gifts, bought him a yummy Oporto burger, and made sure he was sleeping somewhere other then the bushes tonight. Unfortunately I just kept walking, straight back into my job where I raise money for the homeless people of Sydney. Could I live a more contradictory life?
I will forever straddle this line between consumer and giver. I will forever live a juxtaposed life, between being the hands of Jesus and being the feet of the accuser. I will lay down my coat as a sacrifice, only to pick up another, perhaps more expensive, at the cost of another's well being.
Maybe that rock needs to continue to sink. And when that glass surface reappears, more need to break it. Life is a process of brokenness. Of never becoming so satisfied and whole, that we are blind to the man with bare feet in the middle of winter.
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