“Look! The virgin will conceive a child!
She will give birth to a son,
and they will call him Immanuel,
which means ‘God is with us.'”
Matthew 1:23
Last January we had one of the worst blizzards in recorded history. Some of you may remember. The snow started falling late on a Friday night and seemed to just never stop. Every time we expect significant snowfall on outreach days, I ask our team to make sure they are at the Relief Base extra early so we can get the buses cleared off, locked, loaded, and on the road so that we still arrive on time.
I started working in January of 2011 and since then we have only canceled one day of outreach due to weather (aside from the 2 days of outreach we missed when Hurricane Sandy trapped most of our team in Haiti and devastated the Northeastern seaboard) and I was determined to keep our record of consistency alive and well.
My coworker and tenant, Caleb, and I woke up early and shoveled our way into my Honda CRV. My vehicle allegedly packs All Wheel Drive, but by the time we got to the bakery where we had hoped to collect a donation for that day’s outreaches, we had gotten stuck twice. We couldn’t even get to the door of the bakery as the parking lot was completely covered.
On our way back to the Relief Base we got stuck again. It was not a comfortable feeling. I realized that we had interns who drove old-school sedans and who may not have had a lot of experience driving in snow. I came to the agonizing decision that it just wasn’t wise to ask them to force it. I pictured Bryson from Wichita, Kansas smashing into a telephone pole or getting stranded on some back road as the snow got worse and worse. I sent a text out to the team, informing them that the roads were just too bad and we should all just try to get to a safe place and ride it out.
Almost as soon as I hit the send button, I got a call from a guy I had met at the Relief Bus the day before in Manhattan named Alfonso. “Are you guys coming? I don’t have anywhere to go for a meal today.”
Immediately the pain of my shattered pride was smothered in the agony of Alfonso’s plea for help. I had been upset that we had to cancel because I had trained our team that the Relief Bus goes out “no matter what.” By canceling, I felt I was being inconsistent. Hypocritical. But when Alfonso said he had no place to eat it wrecked me on a completely different level.
“I’m sorry, man. We just can’t make it today.”
“I understand. Do you know of any other places that will be serving food in the Bronx today?”
“I don’t. But I will send you the info I have on soup kitchens in the Bronx. I’d call first though, this storm is looking like it could get pretty bad.” I didn’t have any hope that a single one of the places I was sending him would be open.
Caleb and I barely managed to make it back to my driveway. My phone rang as I was kicking the snow off my boots and cursing my vehicle for its lackluster performance. One of our Senior Outreach Leaders was calling,
“Hey Brett, what’s up?”
“Seriously, we are canceling?” The knife twisted.
“Yeah. Caleb and I can’t even get to the Base, how can I ask other people to try to get there?” I know I probably sounded more pissed off than I would have liked.
“Well, we are all here.” He replied. “What would you like us to do?”
“What?”
“Yep, Bryson is here. The other interns walked here and several of us spent the night. You and Caleb are the only ones not here.”
“Well, we tried and my car won’t make the trip.”
“Why don’t I come and get you? I have a truck with 4 wheel drive and I had no issues this morning.”
“That sounds like a splendid idea!” My heart leapt. I realized that I was going to get to call Alfonso back and tell him the news: “We are on our way!”
Brett arrived a few minutes later and we headed out. We managed to get to both of our outreach locations.
Alfonso was waiting for us when we arrived in Harlem.
In Matthew it says that Jesus will be called “Immanuel, which means God is with us.” Too many people in this world think that God is a figment of our imagination. Too many people think that even if there is a God, he is ambivalent, missing in action, pointless.
The hard truth for those of us who profess the name of Jesus is that too often the reason people think that God is not “with us” is because we are not with them.
The reason the Relief Bus goes to the streets “no matter what” is because we want our words to mean something to the people we serve. Too many folks living in the street have been let down by those who say one thing and do another. Too many people sleeping on subways and on park benches have been told about a God who is “with them” but have yet to see the Body of Christ back it up.
I’m convinced that the best way to introduce people who are lost to the hope of heaven after death is to give them a taste of it right here and now. I love how Bono, the lead singer of U2 says it:
“God is in the slums, in the cardboard boxes where the poor play house. God is in the silence of a mother who has infected her child with a virus that will end both their lives. God is in the cries heard under the rubble of war. God is in the debris of wasted opportunity and lives, and God is with us if we are with them.”
Grace and Peace,
Josiah