When I served breakfast at a soup kitchen this morning, the lead pastor told the volunteers our first goal when the 700 guests walked through the door to receive their meal was to show them dignity, to help restore their dignity in the way that we treat them.
It makes sense. When you lose your job, when you are homeless, when you are addict, when you are hungry and digging through a trash to find that scrap of food, when you have no money and nowhere to go your dignty is the first to go.
I pass the the same homeless people everyday. I pass the same beggers, the same men asleep on the steps at 86th street, the same people digging through the trash on the corner, and I question do I treat them with dignity? Do I look them in the eye and smile, do i acknowledge their presence, do I show Jesus to them even in small ways?
Since moving to NYC my relationship with my neighbors without housing has been a struggle for me. I struggle with how to be of help? I know I can't give money to everyone who ask. I try to give granola bars, but I often forget to keep one in my purse. It's something you can't forget about here, yet something that I can often get frustated with.
But today i was reminded. I may not be able to always help them, but I can show dignity to them. I can treat them with love and respect. I can not look down to avoid them when they ask me for money, I can not ignore them as if they are not there,
Today as they filed through the soup kitchen there was music playing and the volunteers lined the entryway clapping and cheering and welcoming them as if they were the most important people in the world. It was a humbling moment for me. A moment where the nastiness of my heart came out knowing that I don't show this kind of dignity in my daily life. A moment when I realized I am no better than them. It is only by God's grace that I am not living on the street or struggling to make ends meet or addicted to drugs. I don't deserve to be where I was standing and I so often forget that.
So today it was a joy to serve these sweet people who walked through the door. To give them food, to talk to them, to smile at them and make each person I serve feel like they were the most important person in that room. It reminded me that I am in this city to be a light and I want to be a light wherever I go. To point to those who feel like they matter to noone that there are people who care, that there is an incredible Father in Heaven who is eager to welcome them home.
Living life in NYC means constantly being pulled out of your comfort zone, moment after moment of learning and being stretched as an individual. I am thankful for these daily opportunities and thankful that today the Lord used a soup kitchen in the Lower East Side to challenge me and remind me of a very specific way I can be a light in this city.
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