Jesus gets hungry too.

Near the office where I work, there is a "big-box" national-chain grocery store. I go here often on breaks because it is so close, and pick up the odds and ends I don’t necessarily feel like stopping for after work. Often when I go there, Jesus is sitting right outside.

Well, I don’t think her name is actually Jesus. But whenever I walk by her, Jesus calls my name.

She sits beside the crates outside the building; a feeble attempt at rain shelter, but a shelter nonetheless. She wears a forest green winter coat with the hood up over her head. Sometimes, she is reading a Bible. More often than not, I pick up my pace and fix my eyes on the doors ahead of me; “if I can just get inside, I can ignore it! Maybe Jesus will stop whispering.” Pass through the doors - ah! - relief. No more nagging conviction; just the sweet, easing medicine of Purchasing Power and excess. But as I wind my way through the aisles, and as I stare at rows upon rows of food and edible treats, my spirit always wanders back outside the doors and plants itself right beside her.

Inevitably, there comes a point when I have to leave the store. Same pattern: eyes fixed, quicked steps, self-loathing self-talk, and loud music once I get back into my vehicle...


Today I had this wicked craving for an apple (yes, an apple), but I didn’t have any at my disposal. So I decided it would be best to go and pick up a bag, so I didn’t fulfill my craving with chocolate or vending machine snacks. I broke away from my desk, hopped in my car, and took that short journey to the grocery haven. It’s cold today, and a bit drizzly, so I made sure to zip up my coat and adjust my scarf and I snuck my arms around myself to keep warm as I sped my way on foot through the parking lot.

And then I saw her.

"Dammit" I thought, "This is getting much harder to ignore."

Don’t ask me what I have against her, she didn’t do anything to me. And in fact, my philosophy in life (in speech, anyways) is that we are supposed to help the poor, and feed the hungry, and clothe the naked. And I promise you that every time I walk by my spirit is going “do something, do something, do something, do something do something do something”, but my brain is telling me what a horrible person I am for not stopping to do something.

So I bought my apples. And I picked up a few other things while I was in there. I couldn’t shake her though, not like I normally can. “Maybe you can give her an apple,” I tell myself sarcastically (all the while knowing I am defining the word ‘hypocrite’). As I left the store, I glanced over at her. She was looking right at me. I looked away but then I looked over at her again and smiled a weak smile and the weight of my grocery bags began to multiply. And then I heard it (you’ll recognize this, it’s the sound that you ignore too);

…”excuse me….”

A frail, far off sounding voice. Coming right from the Jesus sitting by my grocery store. To me.

I walked over to her, and then I stopped and looked at her…really looked at her (I’m not going to lie, up until this point in time I had thought she was a man, because she is so dark from dirt and rough from weathering).

“would you…do you have any spare change? ….for some food?...”

I didn’t. I don’t carry cash, ever. At this point I feel horrible. And I feel like I’m carrying a full grown horse under each arm.

“I’m so sorry, I don’t have anything…I don’t ever carry cash…” and then I said, very weakly, “…do you want an apple? I just bought some.”

She responded, butI didn’t hear her right away. I was too busy telling myself that she probably didn't want an apple, what a dumb thing to offer her you hypocrite. After a small delay, her response (“oh..yes, that would be so nice!”) sunk in, and I found myself kneeling on the wet sidewalk in my work clothes, my grocery bags in the shallow puddle beside me, and I am less than one foot away from this earth-wearing warrior.

Two apples, I handed her two apples. As I handed them to her, I was struck by two things:

One: her hands.
They are filthy. They are black from wrist to nail, from fingertip to palm.

Two: the apples.
They are bright. They almost glow against the darkened background of her haggard appearance.

She kept apologizing for bothering me, and despite all of my gentle words of reassurance, she would not stop apologizing. "Have a good day," I tell her, genuinely hoping that she has a good day. As I walk away from her, I am realizing quite a few things about myself, and about the situation in which I now find myself.

I can not keep her at bay. She will always be hungry, and she will likely always be there, sitting in the rain, filthy hands outstretched. And she, who is like so many others, needs people like me (and so many others), to live as a community ought to: taking care of those who can not take care of themselves. What a sickening irony, that outside a “Big Box” there should be a hungry person, unable to eat. That in one of the Richest Nation's richest areas, there should be entire neighborhoods devoted to the homeless; the weak, the frail, the hungry, the dirty, the dying – and a few blocks away there are gargantuan houses, empty rooms a plenty. In a metropolis of over a million people, should there ever be a lonely soul, a homeless child, a bed-less man?

And this is the situation in which I now find myself: reality. The reality that I have been given the ability to feed someone who’s hungry but I haven’t been doing that, at all. The reality that I claim to love Jesus but often sit on my hands and shut my eyes and tune out the voice of Him who’s given me so much (so that I might give…). And the reality that even though I gave that woman two apples, I did not give her everything I had in my hands, even though I very well could have afforded to. It’s uncomfortable; realizing that I am selfish.

Praise God that it is uncomfortable.

(...thanks Chelsea)