Upriser, Emily Nickerson posted the following as a MySpace bulletin. Of course, we grabbed the opportunity to feature her reflections about last weekend’s Homeless Outreach on the blog. (I did ask her first, and she said it was okay to repost it.)
Homeless Outreach was hard tonight!
Posted Date: Jul 26, 2008 10:27 PM
It started off great, the Gay’s, Kenny and I went above the bridge and passed out food and water which is what I usually do when I go to homeless outreach. This time we came back early so Kenny, me and Andrew Gay just hung around playing with a string thing… While we were doing that I was thinking that I really wanted to talk to someone, so I looked around and was watching one guy just hanging out waiting for something near me. I really struggled to go and talk to him, but when I did I was glad I had a chance to talk to him.
I asked about his guitar and how long he had been playing. He said 5 years and that it wasn’t really that cool. I asked him why and he said because he plays most of his songs that are about dying. I again asked him why he did that and he said something like he didn’t deserve to be living and that he shouldn’t go to heaven because of all the wrong things he has done. I was speechless and felt like I was tripping over my words because I really didn’t expect to hear that. I felt like the words I was saying to him were “church” words.
(But praying that God will use them anyways.)
I told him that God looks at sin the same. That if someone does something that you don’t think is “that bad” compared to something that is Horrible, God doesn’t see it that way. He sees it as the same.
I also said that God has Mercy and He wants to forgive you and see you in Heaven!
The sad part is that One Bear (his name) agreed with me and the things I said, but he just didn’t see himself as someone God could do all that for!
It really broke my heart to really have someone say that to me. It is one thing when you hear someone else share their story about someone saying that to them, but when it is said to you… it is really different.
SO! If you want to pray for One Bear that would be awesome!! Because although he didn’t think he was a nice guy, HE really was!!
