The Letter

On Sunday, a number of people inquired into the letter, from Laurence East, which Mark read during his sermon. Below is the letter. What are you and I going to do about it?
Dear Friends,
I wish I knew how to write in such a way that I could create for you in your mind’s eye an exact replica of what is in mine. Tonight Metro’s Christmas party was bittersweet. There was an excitement about the anticipated gifts and special food – and yet the sadness of knowing that just this week ‘Bobby’ – a girl who had been to Metro numerous times, was found dead two streets away. There are rumours suggesting foul play, even though initial police reports suggest suicide. A member of the Metro team had begun to build a friendship with her and often drove her home to make sure she would be safe.
The place tonight was packed, and the walls were decorated – just as you might expect at Christmas. There was a tree – with presents underneath; scarves, socks hats, gloves and mittens. Corey Janz and Band played their hearts out and as I began to preach there was a disturbance in the back of the room. To be honest, I often think that’s a sign of things going well. I believe that when the spirit of God is on the move, then the Devil chooses to distract and unsettle people. We pray against it – but we know it’s a reality. As always, I prayed as I preached that God would grant me favour with those who were listening. I looked across the room and wondered at the stories of so many that we have come to consider friends.
There’s mad ‘Harry’, grinning and waving, ‘Peter’ a believer and self-proclaimed street evangelist; ‘Willy’, the product of an elite English private school education now on the street, a number of those who have come to know the Lord through Metro, and many who have yet to. My eyes locked with ‘Alex’, one of my friends. He was the first friend I made downtown and told me from the very beginning that he doesn’t believe in God, and yet 11 months later, here he is listening intently to a gospel message and not missing a moment. He’s a self-taught street sage and sees himself as a bit of a wise man, but is curiously attending Metro as religiously as someone in desperate need of meaning might.
After all the gifts were given, the food was eaten and the final table put away, ‘Jonathan’ (a recent addition to the Metro crowd) and I, decided to take the remaining gifts onto the street and give them to the many people who do not attend Metro or for one reason or another cannot or will not go into the Gospel Mission.
On any given night, it is estimated that Kelowna has 300-400 people sleeping without shelter and food. Tonight, despite the relatively mild -7 degree temperature, we saw less folk than normal. Even so, as we took my truck and scoured the downtown core, we soon began to run out of the large supply of clothes and blankets we had begun with. We parked at various spots, jumped out and began to meet with people hunkered in doorways, rocking back and forth – trying desperately with trembling hands to fire up their crack hits. We found people wedged between garbage dumpsters and the back wall of a number of nice restaurants that you and I like to frequent. People on the street don’t just find shelter in shadows – they are shadows, and we treat them as such. They have learnt to become invisible when they need to and unless you drive really slowly or get out and walk, you will never see them. But they are there.
I tried desperately to put at the back of my mind the images of the people slipping out of the eateries and pubs just long enough to slump into their heated cars before the bite of the chilly air found its way under their winter coats, oblivious to the pain and suffering a few feet away.
More than once I was shouted or honked at by other drivers for stopping at an intersection to hand out some gloves and socks to the two or three people gathered there to score, deal or simply pass the time. Realistically, on any given night I would be one of those agitated drivers, in a rush to get home to avoid having to pay my babysitter more than I had budgeted for.
At one stage ‘Gary’, one of the guys I’ve come to know downtown, bundled into my truck while it was parked and curled up to stay warm and refused to leave. A little later we came across two ladies rocking back and forth in withdrawal from crystal meth, sitting on the cold concrete half-frozen to death. We gave them blankets and I wrapped them tight so they wouldn’t come loose. One of the ladies didn’t even want a blanket at first. She simply was waiting for her dealer (boyfriend) to arrive with the hit she needed to get through the night.
Two streets later and we bundled out to give ‘Krista’, a young, pretty, 18-year-old blonde working girl, a matching set of mittens, scarf and hat. She was freezing but needed to look ‘sexy’ to catch the eye of a lonely passer-by. Finally, in the shadows behind the former A&B Sound building, we came across another woman jonesing – in too much pain to even give herself the heroin she needed to stop the effects of the poison she has come to depend upon. She was screaming and needed water desperately – and so cold she had lost all feeling in her arms.
She begged to warm herself in my truck and as we blasted the heat out of the vents, she literally pressed herself against the dashboard as she sobbed and convulsed in pain. In the shadows a few feet away, her friend fired up a ‘china white’ hit that would allow her a brief but painless escape – even just for a few hours until the monstrous pain returns even harder.
Why am I telling you this? Because a few hours earlier, I was preaching a message of God’s gift of love to his creation, that he sent his only son for the lost, destitute, downtrodden, lonely and hurting – that the very fact that Jesus was born in a stable and lain in a manger was because God wanted to demonstrate that his son was coming to be the Saviour of all people! And yet, here are the very people I was talking about, standing cold, lonely, hurting and where is His church?
I know I’m being simplistic, and that there arguments that would suggest that people can receive help if only they ‘wanted’ it badly enough or if they were truly ‘willing’ to give up their addictions. But tonight, perhaps more than any night during my time with Metro, those arguments seemed terribly convenient for all of us who have warm homes, full cupboards and the promise of a Christmas of plenty. Every soul I encountered tonight at Metro and on the street thanked me profusely for all that we were doing for them. One lady took three pairs of socks for her rotting feet and told me that we were ‘angels’. I thought one guy wouldn’t let go of my hand, he shook it three or four times. Even the big gruff, tough boys shook my hand and held on tight to their new gloves and socks!
Yet, the further the night went on, the more ashamed I felt. I was expecting to feel all warm, fuzzy and ‘Christmassy’ inside. Instead, I felt more and more frustrated. I was embarrassed that these wonderful children of God, who he loves and knows intimately – would be thanking us for a scarf, or a pair of socks?! I saw one lady take an extra set from our bag and go and put it on a girl slumped in a doorway who was passed out.
The thing is…. This is not the tale of a missions team in LA or the back streets of Calcutta – this is our home and these are our neighbours. I’d love to be all self-righteous and tell you that I hand out clothes and blankets and do this all the time, but don’t. I’m as guilty as anyone of turning my back. As I write this, I’m back in my warm home, in my comfy chair. I’m not hungry or cold, but I’m conflicted and troubled. “…as you do unto the least of these, you do also unto me."
I need your help. Help me understand why we can get a church full of people to happily deposit clothes and food in the lobby, but not take it to people on the street of their own accord.
Help me understand how we can have a church full of such friendly and loving people who want to ‘lead people to follow Jesus’ but are terrified to come downtown.
Help me cope with the fact that even after reading about a night like tonight in their own city, and knowing that those same people are still hungry, cold and without hope right this second, that most people will move on with their day and eventually continue planning for Christmas as per usual. Help me understand how to explain to people what it does to your soul when your hand grasps the hand of another, and you feel the cuts and the grazes and the cold and yet their eyes speak thanks and warmth despite the relatively insignificant material value of the gift you just given them.
Finally, help me understand how to ‘bridge the gap’ for people, between charity at a distance and being burdened by God to be the hands and feet of Jesus. Tonight I’m not feeling like we’re getting very far.
Earlier this evening I used the following verse in my message. I was hoping it would have a lasting impact on the crowd. I think God ended up using it as a lesson for me!
1Co 1:26
Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him. It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption. Therefore, as it is written: "Let him who boasts boast in the Lord."

I know God loves our downtown ‘neighbours’ – but he has given the practical responsibility of caring for them to His church. I may be having an emotional ‘Popeye moment’, but I pray that in the morning I will be different because of it, and that God will continue to use the ‘weak things of the world, to shame the strong’.

Laurence East