Joy lessons from a rawhide strip

 

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of $9165 to fully fund my race, with $1165 of that due by July 1.   If
you feel led to contribute $10 or $25 a month (which translates into 3-6 Starbucks
frappuccinos) or any other amount, I encourage you to select Support Me from the sidebar on the left.

 

During our last two days of training,
we hit the streets of downtown Atlanta for something called Ask the
Lord, or ATL.  (The fact that we were actually in ATL for an ATL is
completely coincidental.)  AIM believes that as Christians (and human
beings in general), we spend too much time talking and not enough
time listening.  ATL is basically teams sitting down together and
praying and listening.

 

Now, I’ll be the first to admit that I
have no freaking clue what it means to listen to God.  I tend to be a
very literal and logic-minded person.  I like facts, percentages,
statistics, and confirmed evidence of stuff happening.  I’m a Thomas
in the sense that to believe something, I usually have to see it.  So
the idea of listening to a God who is not physically saying words
right in front of me is something that is totally foreign to me (not
to mention the fact that it sounds absolutely crazy).

 

So Petra got together and we sat around
and started the process, and I felt basically like I was surrounded
by sheer ridiculousness.   I sat there with my eyes closed trying to
focus on what I imagined God was trying to tell me. I ended up with
flashes of ski poles, the letter H, and pinwheels.  Great.  I had
officially lost my mind.

 

 

 

We left SafeHouse and headed in the
general direction of Centennial Olympic Park.  Between the seven of
us, we chatted up several vendors, a few homeless guys, and a cop. 
Several of my teammates would tell you that they saw God working in
those interactions they had.  But I’ll be honest: I wasn’t seeing
anything.  We were talking to homeless guys, sure, and we were doing
what we could to add a little hope to their lives, but something just
wasn’t clicking to me.  Realistically, what could we do to help these
men?   We couldn’t house them, we couldn’t really feed them much, and
we couldn’t magically relieve them of their drug habits.

 

And then we met Rolf.

 

We were continuing in the general
direction of Centennial when a man in a wheelchair darted in front of
us, spun to face us, and started wheeling backwards and chatting with
the Petrites in the front.  My natural instinct with most of the men
we had met that day was an aversion, since, after all, I’ve spent the
past nine months or so in close proximity to New York City, home of
the Sketchy Street Guy.  But Rolf made me giddy and lifted my heart. 
He ended up guiding us to the CNN Center and Centennial Park, and he
even took it upon himself to protect us from various con guys trying
to rustle up a quick buck from the seven of us.

 

The moment I remember most from that
day was in Centennial Park: I was sitting on the edge of the Olympic
Fountain between Joel and Tim, chatting with Rolf, while the other
four ladies chatted with another down-on-his-luck man, when a woman
walked by with a puppy on a leash.  Of course, I immediately started
oooh-ing and awww-ing like an idiot.  Rolf’s reaction was to
immediately reach into the cart attached to his chair, fish out a
strip of rawhide, and wheel over to the puppy and place it in front
of it.

 

 

At that moment, my heart broke with
realization.  Here was this man, with no real home, no reliable
source of income, and every right to be vindictive and bitter about
his place in life.  Instead, he was giving a gift to a puppy.  Yes, I
love puppies, and that gift won me over immediately, but this strip of rawhide was one of many.  When Rolf
wheeled back to us, he said something like, “I keep a bag of them
to give to the pups around the park. I like to see them happy.” 
Rolf has nothing but his chair and the contents of his shelf, but he delights in the happiness of others, and that delight brings joy to those whose lives he intersects with.  He trusts God with every day of his life to feed him and provide
the basic needs for survival, and he is joyful
with every second.   Who are we, with roofs over our heads and full
bellies, to have any source of complaint?  Can’t we find enough contentment in the joy of strangers?  If a homeless man can do it, why can’t we?

 

And as a bonus, we passed a closed hair
salon with a row of pinwheels in the window.  Ski poles, however, are
hardly common in Atlanta in late May.