Getting Rescued

(Helping during a Kids event at the Union Rescue Mission)

(The view from the roof of the Union Rescue Mission; also the same roof where we spent the night)

Here at the Union Rescue Mission in Los Angeles, I am faced with a bunch of different feelings, when there is enough of a pause to experience them. We're serving, starting with breakfast at 5:45, straight to a celebrity studded charity event for the kids, and in a couple hours, to help serve dinner.

The Union Rescue Mission is in the heart of skid row, serving the homeless and indigent located here. The idea is to fill their stomachs and give them shelter, while sharing the hope of Jesus Christ, and the eternal life He brings those who decide to follow Him.

I am torn, expecting a bunch of things; God to work through the service, God working in me, trying to find a way to relate to these very different people. But are they different? How am I different in my struggles and disappointments and inability to live the full life God intended for me? How am I different...because of Zip code? Because of income or skin color? I realize that we're all in the same boat, and anything I do to serve, springs not from my superiority, but from a common broken place that yearns for God's strength to replace my weakness. I have been really disappointed in how I have chosen to interact with those around me; If I wish to resemble Christ, how can I miss the mark so easily? I'm not saying that I've been unkind to anyone or unfriendly, but how can the dichotomy of the crummy parts in conjunction with the good actually culminate in anything worthwhile? How can a mind that gets it right in one moment and totally wrong the next be anything but CRAZY?

The truth is that trying to build my life from an erector set of cogs and braces of my own efforts is destined to tip over and collapse under the strain of its inherent mediocrity at the most inopportune times. The truth is that being obedient to God through Christ and FOLLOWING His example is the only way my life will count for anything past the brief whisp of smoke my time on Earth really is. An appropriate answer to my question lies in the bulk of Phillipians 2. Lord, take me and make me one with you; show me the way to a life that bears eternal fruit, instead of the bitter fruit my efforts bring.