THE TREE

“For I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.” Matthew 25:35-36

After living my whole life in a large city, we moved to a small northern Arizona town, where houses sat on 1 acre lots, or larger. From stoplights every 2 streets, to 2 stoplights in the whole town. From helicopters and sirens all night long in the surrounding neighborhood, to a siren every few months, or less. It was a welcomed change, it was a time to slow down and enjoy life.

About 3 months later I had to make a business trip back to the city. It didn’t take much time to realize how quickly I had acclimated to small town life and how overwhelming the big city could be.

Highway travel with cars darting in and out, merging, volleying for position, and set on getting somewhere as fast as they could. I set my car in the direction I needed to go and focused completely on getting there. The feeling of being overwhelmed ceased, but the realization that in all this scattered and tempered movement, no one went anywhere quickly, at least not during rush hour.

After a long day’s work, I decided to try the inner city streets to get cross to the highway. It went rather smoothly across the city, until I had to take the major street that would connect me to the highway. I had no idea that the turn I was about to make would shock me.

The time I saved traveling across the inner city was lost in the creeping traffic of the main artery streets that crossed the city to accessed the highway; streets that business people travel night and day to get to the large corporations, legal offices and medical specialist complexes; where a large group of people become invisible to the eye of daily life. It was a group of people I knew existed, but I never “really” saw. A group of people that walked the streets where I had lived; slept in the parks where my children had played; there on that street lay the homeless.

It took moving away to see the pain and desolation of these displaced people, lying on bus-stop benches and along the sidewalks. Groups huddled closely to stay warm; people walking down the sidewalk moved from side to side to avoid the extended arms and outstretched legs of the sleeping. Commuting people stepped over dirty backpacks and encrusted duffle bags, people walked by, never making eye contact with those they stepped over.

I looked around at the other drivers, many were accustomed to this daily trek, with papers across the steering wheel, cell phones to their ears, paper bag dinners being consumed. They weren’t looking to the side. They weren’t seeing the people on the side. They had an agenda.

I cried out to God, asking why I had not seen these people before. Why did my heart break now, but not when I lived close enough to have done something? At one time these people represented a threat that I had to protect my children from – perhaps an unrealistic threat, yet one that seemed so real at the time. I had seen them as a group instead of individuals, each with a set of circumstances and events that placed them where they were, or encouraged them to choose this lifestyle.

I stopped at a convenience mart to get a cup of coffee and a snack; the homeless sat and lay all around the perimeter, some stood together near the building. One man, close to my age, stood near the door. I made my purchases and as I approached the door he opened it. He smiled a broad smile, teeth missing, in need of a bath, layered in clothes to break the cold. I smiled back and thanked him, he gestured back and went about his business.

I sat in the parking lot a long time, taking it all in. I was overwhelmed by the needs of these people; I was overwhelmed because there was nothing I could do. I felt hopelessness for them; I felt hopelessness for me. I was ashamed for not seeing the reality of life before my eyes in the 30 years I had lived in the area, 2 of those years less than a mile from where I was this day, 3 years in a similar area. Why hadn’t I seen?

I made my way back onto the street filled with creeping traffic. Tears filled my eyes, my heart broken. There were homeless on both sides of the street for miles. I asked Jesus to forgive me for the heart I had hardened toward these children of God. I began to pray and intercede for their lives, their health, their safety, and their salvation. I cried out to God to send laborers to the fields; fields cluttered with a hungry and dying group of people with no where to call home.

Night was falling quickly, as did the temperature. Blankets surrounded several to increase warmth. Their lives went on as usual, they as unaware of the travelers on the streets as the travelers were of them.

My last prayer was for God to show me that He was there, that these people were as important as I was. I needed to know that those lives were not wasted. I needed to regain the faith that God was in control, even in the dismal situations that lined these streets.

As I reached the freeway entrance and made my turn I spotted my answer on the very top of a cold dark sky-scrapper. On that January night, when all corporations had closed and the lights dimmed, there stood a Christmas tree, lights twinkling in the night sky, a bright white star at the very top. A small symbol of Christ and His birth – accidentally left turned on.

Jesus, never let me forget that we all start our lives as babies. We grow to face events and circumstances that guide our paths. Let me never forget that everyone born must have hope, true hope that could only come by knowing Christ. Let me be a bearer of the light to all I meet. Let me be the star at the top of a Christmas tree on a sky-scrapper on a cold dark night when someone looks up to find you.

By Linda J. Humes

Written 2-1-04

**The Emmaus Road”

Tags: Christmas, Homeless, Matthew, Prayer, Tree, Unaware