We had a good, busy day yes­ter­day. We had a small party for Morgon’s belated birth­day, and had our neigh­bors, Jerry and Erika’s fam­ily, and Rick and Katie’s fam­ily come over to go trick-or-treating in our neigh­bor­hood with us and hang out afterward.

I had to run to the gro­cery store for some let­tuce for sup­per, and was asked by a cheer­ful home­less lady on my way out if she could wash my van win­dows for some change for some­thing to eat. I was in a hurry, so I gave her a dol­lar and went on.

As I drove off, I had the thought, “Hey, why don’t you invite her for din­ner?” By the time I had dri­ven the two blocks to our street, I sud­denly real­ized that part of me was work­ing really hard to come up with all the rea­sons needed to not do some­thing crazy like that; we were busy, had a lot to do to get ready for that evening, etc.

I got home and dropped the let­tuce off, and told Ari what I was think­ing. I asked Mor­gon if he minded hav­ing com­pany come over for his birth­day din­ner, and when he fig­ured out I was talk­ing about a home­less lady, his eyes lit up and he got real excited.

“Yeah! That would be great!”

I drove back down to the gro­cery store and quickly found the lady, who was still hunt­ing around, spray bot­tle in hand, for window-washing jobs.

“You’re back!” She smiled at me.

“Yeah, I was think­ing about how you were ask­ing for change for food. My fam­ily lives just a cou­ple blocks from here, and my wife and I would be hon­ored if you would come and eat din­ner with us.”

“Oh,” she said, stunned. Then, apolo­get­i­cally, “I’m sorry, I have a husband.”

I grinned at her, “That’s ok, I have a wife.”

“But he’d have to come along too.”

“That’s ok.”

She seemed gen­uinely con­fused at this point.

“So you’d take us to your house for supper?”

“Yep.”

“Just for supper?”

“Yes.”

“And then bring us back here?”

“Sure, I’d be happy to.”

She didn’t seem to know what to do with me. “It’s just that nobody’s ever offered to do that before. Why?”

“Well, we’re Chris­tians, but I fig­ure that we can talk about being Chris­tians and chang­ing the world all we want, but unless we’re ready to do some­thing about it, it’s all just talk.”

She nod­ded. “Well, that makes sense. I’ll need to ask my hus­band, though, he’s across the park­ing lot here. You want to just drive over to that laundromat?”

So I drove over there, watch­ing as she started try­ing to explain to a short, dark-haired man that some crazy young man was invit­ing them to sup­per at his house. He was pretty appre­hen­sive, but she seemed to have warmed up to the idea, and coaxed him to come meet me.

I intro­duced myself and invited him per­son­ally, and they decided to come with me, though he was still pretty reluc­tant. I real­ized it was a mix­ture of dis­trust and embar­rass­ment. They were hardly pre­sentable, they said, and I reas­sured them the best I could that we really did want them in our house.

Their names were Billy and Jackie. Both in their early 50’s, I think. She is super friendly and loves to chat. As Billy says, “If she’s not talk­ing, there’s usu­ally noth­ing to talk about.” He has a braid threaded through his ball­cap and kind eyes under­neath his sunglasses.

So I took them home, intro­duced them to my fam­ily, and we sat down to some deli­cious home­made tacos. We had a great time chat­ting and shar­ing the meal. The boys were very polite, and Ari told me later that they were so excited about the guests com­ing that when they saw me drive up, they moved their plates to the cof­fee table in the liv­ing room to make room.

We got to know each other while we ate, found out where they were liv­ing (in an aban­doned build­ing a few blocks away), what they do in win­ter, how Jackie’s kids were doing, and other sundry topics.

Ari served up the home­made black­berry cob­bler she made for Morgon’s birth­day with ice cream for dessert.

“It’s been a long time since I’ve had any­thing like this,” Billy said.

They asked me to take them back to the store after the meal, and thanked me over and over. I told them that we had a great time, and I was really glad to meet them.

“Well, you cer­tainly are a Chris­t­ian,” Jackie declared. “Nobody ever does that.”

I looked her and Billy in the eye, “Well, I think that’s a real shame.”

And I do. I’m ashamed it’s taken me this long to do it, too. Some­times it can be hard to get stuck at the first word in the label “home­less peo­ple”, and for­get that it’s the sec­ond which is most important.

What does it cost us? Some com­fort, and the risk of being taken advan­tage of. But when you’re talk­ing about homelessness–or some other uncom­fort­able subject–over din­ner, and it’s fac­ing you from across the table, you’ve got to wres­tle with some hard stuff. I think that wrestling is good.

We’re here to show the Love of Jesus to peo­ple, and I saw last night how pow­er­ful that can be. And I think that we as Chris­tians can use a bit more risk and get­ting taken advan­tage of.