Last night’s dinner guests

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.