It was clear that many of the people there had been sleeping in the woods and hadn’t had a shower in quite a while. Unlike the average college students burdened with textbooks, their overstuffed backpacks carried all their earthly possessions. This was a totally different environment from the college campus!
Both the students who came with me and I were glad to be there. We were at a local faith-based mission devoted to reaching the poor and the forgotten. We were there to help; we were there because of love.
Though the primary thrust of our ministry here in Tallahassee is to reach students on the campuses, we had been feeling a burden to do more to serve the poor and homeless living nearby the university campuses.
After serving breakfast to some homeless men and women, we went to the largest government housing area in town and distributed groceries. Some of our team helped cart groceries back to the apartments of those receiving them. While helping, we were able to get to know these people and also offered to pray for them. One young woman we helped told me that she had lived in this project since she was eight years old. She is now a grown adult with two children of her own, still living there.
The (generational) problems of poverty and homelessness are difficult and complex, even frustrating. I don’t know if the lives of any of the people we served that day were forever changed because of what we did. But I do believe what we did was important: Jesus calls us to go to “the least” (Matt. 25:40) as well as to “the lost” (Luke 15).
We believe that directing some of our young leaders to serve in circumstances such as these is an important part of good discipleship. It helps nurture the attitudes and behaviors essential to the Christian life.