I have a question for you, and I want you to be brutally honest with yourself before answering. No pat or automatic "Christiany" answers allowed. Be real. Here it is. When God speaks, do you really listen? I'm not sure most people can say they really do, I know I certainly couldn't but I recently had a Holy Spirit inspired encounter and it utterly changed my life. It's a long story, so get comfy.

The final full week of June found my husband and me spending a week with the youth group from our church at a youth conference in Cincinnati, Ohio called S.O.S (Summer of Service) at the Cincinnati Vineyard Christian Fellowship. It was an intense week of serving the community through outreach projects, participating in great worship, listening to strong teaching, and learning to follow the leading of God, to be His hands and feet in this world.

It was Wednesday, after a time of prayer, when God chose to rock the world of every member of our group. The theme of the week was social justice. Over the previous days we'd been handing out water, building walls for houses with Habitat for Humanity, and listening to a speaker discuss caring for orphans. The purpose of the outreach this particular day was to practice listening to God and then "doing the stuff," whatever that may be. So as we sat quietly in prayer asking God to speak to us, He did, giving each group member a word or "picture."

Remember this was a group of eight teens with three adult leaders just wanting to listen to  and serve God. The Holy Spirit inspired one person with visions of the Cincinnati Reds baseball stadium, another saw hot dogs. One person saw tall, uncut grass and a white house off by itself. Others saw an underpass, water, a pier, a man walking with a little girl. One received the name "Billy." It all seemed pretty strange and random to us, but after some discussion we decided to go downtown to the baseball stadium, hand out hot dogs, and see where God led us from there.

Being from Grand Rapids, MI we had zero knowledge of the area, although we were provided with an outreach volunteer from the church who knew the area. She was already excited because what we didn't know was the area we'd been assigned to was indeed where the baseball stadium was located, and it was next to the river. Throughout the week we traveled by school bus to our various destinations, so with her GPS in hand, she loaded us on the bus and we headed out.

We stopped at Sam's Club along the way, picking up some cooked hot dogs our volunteer had ordered for us. The only problem ... there were fifty! We knew we needed to hand out food, but seriously, fifty? A little flustered but trusting God, we directed the driver to drop us off by the Reds stadium. Upon arriving, we discovered construction going on beside the baseball field. We thought that perhaps we should offer the food to the workers, so we headed down the block past the stadium to the river, where we found the office to the site. My husband went in to talk to the site manager and offer the hot dogs. While we were waiting we happened to notice several things. Directly across from the office was the river, where there was a long pier. Off to the left of the pier, across the water on the other side, was a large white house ... standing alone.

My husband returned, informing us the shift changed had already occurred, but the people working in the office would take ten hot dogs and bags of chips, which we'd also purchased. It was then one of our teen girls noticed the covered bridge crossing from one side of the street to the other and a man walking with a little girl in tow. As the family was walking down the stairs of the overpass bridge to the curbside, a couple of the other girls ran over and offered them a hot dog. It was then they noticed there was an underpass at the location as well.

At the same time, there was a woman across the street looking out at the pier, so one of our adult leaders and a couple of youth went and offered her a hot dog as well. She declined, but mentioned that there was a "tent village" nearby and they would certainly appreciate the food. All we needed to do was follow the tunnel under the road (which we would have missed had we not seen the entrance to the underpass when giving food to the man and little girl) to the path through the long, overgrown grass on the other side of the street.

We made our way to the other side, following the path which led us to a group of men and women living in a tent city beside the river in downtown Cincinnati. I can honestly say meeting these people was the most moving and humbling experience of my life. Already running late, the bus was arriving to pick us up and return us to the conference. We were able to spend twenty or thirty minutes with these people that day, spending time shaking their hands and hearing their stories—visiting and being regular folks. It was hard to say goodbye.

When got back to the church and spent time talking about the experience, the teens agreed that rather than spend the day at Cedar Point before coming back home at the end of the week as originally planned, we would take the money set aside for the park and buy things "the guys" might find useful. So early Saturday morning (after Thom had, through another amazing set of circumstances, the chance to go back and find out exactly what they needed) we invaded the local Meijer store. After buying things like canned food, socks, and other essential items, we met our new friends near their "village" location and then spent an hour just hanging out. It was awesome. Yes, these people are homeless. Most of them are alcoholics. Each and every one deserves to be loved and respected.

One of the words received by a member of our group that morning was "show them somebody cares." I think that was the strongest and most moving aspects of this God-led encounter once we got there ... realizing how little love or caring any of these people ever receive.

One man who first greeted us was named Chet. As we came into their village he was kneeling beside a box which held three tiny little kittens. Their mother had been killed three weeks earlier, shortly after they were born, and the members of this little community were caring for the infant animals. The "guys" had even given up the opportunity to buy food for themselves so they could provide for those tiny cats. As I leaned down, scratching the tiniest of the month-old babies on the head, Chet was telling me their names and describing how he'd bottle fed them until they could eat solid food. He talked about the animal loving penchant of the community; they also had a baby raccoon. We chatted some more, until Chet told me his sister was ill in the hospital. I asked if I could pray for her (and him), to which he responded yes, offering me his hand.

Accepting his hand I smiled at him, becoming immediately aware an important moment had occurred as he smiled before lowering his head. I had received Chet's hand without flinching or hesitation—holding his hand firmly in my own. In that moment I understood everything. He'd accepted friendship from me which he honestly wasn't expecting to receive.

"Show them somebody cares."

It's easy to forget about people who are homeless. They become invisible, a "nuisance" to city officials, shunned and forgotten ... except by God.

All people, no matter their circumstance, deserve to be treated with respect and friendship. Those individuals who are homeless, for whatever reason, need to know somebody cares about them and is willing to shake their hand or give them a hug. They need people willing to simply look them in the eye and have a normal conversation, and let them know God remembers and loves them.

When God speaks, do you really listen?

Copyright © by Kristine McGuire Share

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