He had bleached blonde hair and a long blondish red beard. It had been a long time since he had brushed his hair or trimmed his beard. He wore a long-sleeve green flannel shirt, a pair of green and white swimming trunks, and black flip-flops. His face was sun burned and peeling as if he had been out in the sun for years. You would think he was forty years old at a first glance but his brilliant blue eyes and radiating smile told a totally different story. It was like I could see straight through to his soul. Through his eyes I could see his gentleness and innocence. The second I introduced myself, he stole a piece of my heart.
If God tells us to love like he loves and bring strangers into our homes then why aren’t we doing that? Why am I not searching him out and bringing him to sleep in the church when I know he is sleeping outside in the rain? Nights went by and I wondered this every time it rained. Where is he right now? Is he okay? What do you want me to do for him God? I struggled all month trying to figure out what I could do for him. I stopped and had conversations with him every time I saw him and they seemed to get better all the time, but I couldn’t really figure out what more I could do. I had asked him if he needed prayer or if there was anything I could get for him and he said no. I was stumped. I would see him wandering the streets, pacing back and forth trying to bum a cigarette or a bottle of beer. The more I watched him, the more my heart kept crashing into the ground. I felt helpless. I felt like there wasn’t anything I could do to help him. I was growing a little weary in hearing from the Lord and decided to go to the park and spend some time in prayer.
I was journaling about my frustrations, questioning everything, and asking God why I could not hear Him. Ten minutes into my hissy fit with God, random homeless people started coming over to talk and I was like well, ok then. I was still a little confused as to why it was not the person God was breaking my heart for because I kind of needed a breakthrough at this point, but I decided to be in the present and focus on what was put in front of me. It was kind of messy and there were arguments between homeless people going on and punches being thrown. Then, in the midst of the chaos, he walks up with his smiling face. I asked him, if money was no object and he could do anything in the world he wanted what would he do? He told me he would just buy another beer.
Really? I mean, where do you go from there? I was trying to appreciate all of the small change I had seen in him throughout the month because it was our last week there and I wasn’t sure what more I could do. He had gone from sitting with you and not talking and not wanting to go anywhere we invited him to running over with a smiling face and talking to everyone he comes in contact with. We talked a lot that day and asked him if he wanted to go surfing with us the next day and help us learn a little more. He said he would love to and for us to meet him the next morning at 8 a.m. by the tree in the park. We were ecstatic!! Nothing could have made me happier in that moment than to hear him say that. Hope, my teammate, and I planned our entire day around hanging out with him. We wondered though, if we should take a guy with us to a private beach that he was going to take us to, and wondered how safe it would be. No one else seemed crazy about going early in the morning or felt like it was something they needed to do. Then I thought, wait a minute, isn’t God our protector? Why are we going around making Him the back-up plan? We seek out someone else for protection for us so that we don’t have to lean on God and truly see what He can do. So we prayed about it and just went.
I stepped out of the water and grabbed the camera so, I could capture Hope’s moment of surfing. In watching him help her, I dropped to the ground in tears. I cried harder than I’ve cried in a long time. What a beautiful moment. I will never forget the way I felt right then. I could not even begin to thank God enough or even have the right words to describe the way I felt. How could I ever have even thought I needed to bring someone for protection or think that just because he didn’t “have it all together” that I needed to be careful? And who am I to even judge whether he has it all together or not? I am absolutely not even one bit closer to having it together than anyone else in this world.
We all hung out on the beach for a while and I asked a lot more questions trying to get to know him a little better. We walked back into town and he carried the board all the way back for us and during the walk, he looked back with a smile and said “I bet you’ll have a lot to write in your diary about today, huh?” It was a pretty sweet moment.
Just before getting back to the main beach he needed to bum a cigarette and we stopped and talked to a group of guys from all over the world. There were three guys at the picnic table, smoking pot and drinking beer, and we decided to sit down and talk with them for a while. It was awesome meeting them and learning about where they were from. It started to rain so, we all went our separate ways and Hope and I took our new friend out to lunch. While we were walking, I thought to myself how proud I was to be able to walk beside him and call him my friend. We ate some pizza together on the side of the road and then, went our separate ways. Quite possibly the most perfect day ever.
I spent the rest of the day in celebration with God. I asked God if there was anything else I could do for him at this point and I heard, “buy him a bible.” “Is there anything else? Clothes, shoes, food, etc.?” “Nope, just a bible, that’s all.” I questioned that a lot and even went so far as to try to buy a gift certificate at the grocery store only to finally have it confirmed by them telling me that they don’t sell gift cards. After that, I wrote him a letter of encouragement and practically went to the edge of the earth to find some bibles since Byron Bay city council has banned stores from selling them within the city.
