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Zookeeper Cat
April 16th, 2007 @11:37 pm  

Jason, all you can do is weigh the cost/benefit ratio. What you have to know is that, in my experience, a high percentage of transient people excel at playing the religion game in order to get their needs met. They are often forced to in order to meet the requirements placed on them by well-meaning Christian volunteers.

Their needs are usually harmless – food, friendship, sometimes someone to feel sorry for them, sometimes money. If you’ve got a real, vibrant, sold-out walk with God, and a desire to see this guy in eternity, then you can look at the lunch money spent as a converted investment – earthly to heavenly, which is where we’re to store up our treasures. If you can build the relationship to the point where you can ask the questions about “do you have a job,” or “do you need help getting social assistance,” or that sort of thing, good. If he puts up a wall, you’re getting used.

See if you can work towards giving him a fishing rod instead of just handing out fish. You’re right, he does have to make his own choices about how his life goes too. But as my friend at the soup kitchen once told me, sometimes all people need is help straightening out the red tape that they don’t understand in order to get their life re-started.

The question is, do you have your prayer and Bible-reading game on well enough to follow what God wants you to do to help this man? It may make no reasonable, earthly sense at all.

On that note, to keep from writing an entire saga here, maybe I’ll go post about “my children” who we picked up on the side of the road a few years back.

Cat

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