Tonight I fed a homeless man, but, before you go giving me a virtual pat-on-the-back let me confess it doesn't happen as often as it should and that I first noticed him while at the McDonald's Redbox paying a dollar for a movie that I could have been buying him a sandwich with. Interesting how those things work.
Well, I gave myself a mental lecture in the parking lot about how it wasn't safe for me to stop for a homeless man at 12:20 at night in Waco, and continued the lecture all the way home only to have worked myself up enough that I ran up the apartment steps and made him a hasty sandwich-dinner bag and drove back to the parking lot where I'd spotted him.
He was still there, speaking to something I couldn't see and shuffling back and forth in his pinkish colored flip-flops.
I pulled up and called to him, and handed the little dinner package out the window explaining the foods inside.
"Do you have a light?" he asked, sticking a lighter in my window.
"No sir, I've very sorry, I don't"
"No cigarettes?"
"No sir, I don't smoke, I do not have any cigarettes."
"Any cash?"
I glanced down, "Actually I left my purse at home, I'm very sorry sir. "
He proceeded to curse me and hit his hand on the car door, "I don't want food! I want cigarettes!"
I apologized a final time, "I'm very sorry sir, I do not have any cigarettes. But maybe you could give the food to someone else then? I need to go, good night" and left.
It makes me wonder a little bit, should I have bought him cigarettes instead? Of course I did not know what he wanted at the time I prepared the sandwich, but thinking of those times when I ask the individual what they want, such as what kind of sandwich he or she would prefer, if I should consider saying yes if they ask me instead to buy cigarettes.
I won't, because I don't endorse smoking, and would rather give something sustaining rather than harmful when I try to help people, but if what that homeless person really wants is a pack of cigarettes, should I consider? Should I deny them their craving, unhealthy as it is, and instead give them food they will not have an appetite for?
It is curious to consider, and definitely left me puzzling this evening. I can extrapolate upon principles, but I'm left without a perfect answer. In the case of someone as unstable (and I mention now, he was not all mentally there) as this man, is the most effective ministry really the sandwich or the cigarette? We hear about medical mission trips that tend first to the ailments of the body that they may then speak to the hearts, and so for this man afflicted with the "need" for nicotine I wonder if caring for that "disease" first may have been my better action.
Practicality again demands recognition of the fact I was not stopping to share with him, and very likely will not see or recognize him for a future meeting but regardless, deliberation is still dancing on my brain.
Next time will prove another opportunity, prayerfully for more favorable atmosphere where I can invest in a way impacting beyond the temporal shell of body, but for for tonight I won't belittle that. God does as He pleases, and I relinquish my thoughts that they might be pleasing to Him.
Good night.
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