Waiting With Hope - Winter 2008

“But many who are first will be last and the last will be first.”
Matthew 19:30 NRSV
By Ann Jordan, Side-By-Side Volunteer

Once a week I volunteer as a Side-By-Side spiritual companion for the homeless at Friendship Park in the Loaves and Fishes complex.  When I first began volunteering, I thought there would be lots to do.  I would give out information.  I would help people find a place to stay at night.  I would fix problems.  And sometimes, I would direct homeless people to the resources they need.  But mostly, I wait.

Friendship Park is always crowded in the mornings.  I look around the park and see so many homeless people waiting, right along with me.  I see few smiles on faces.  As I wait, I wander through the park or just sit on one of the benches.  Sometimes I strike up a conversation with someone.  But mostly, I wait.

Waiting is something the homeless know how to do.  They wait a lot.  They wait for meals and showers.  They wait for temporary shelter.  It they’re lucky, they wait for buses or the metro, or transportation from a friend who has a car.  They wait for candles to be handed out, so they’ll have light and a sense of warmth each night on the cold street.

When you have no place to call home night after night, hope must be very illusive, almost non-existent.  Yet, at Friendship Park I’ve learned that waiting always involves hope, even if it’s only a tiny bit of hope.  When we wait, we hope things will change.  When we resign ourselves to the circumstances at hand, when we stop waiting expectantly, we give up hope.  We see no future.

In the waiting and the listening I do at Friendship Park, I find that my homeless friends are not so very different from me.  To be sure, they have made mistakes.  And they know it.  But just like the rest of us, they long for respect, understanding, love and forgiveness.  These are things we all need.  I think the only real difference between my homeless friends and myself is this:  I tend to take respect, understanding, love and forgiveness for granted.  But they don’t.

So, I wait with the homeless in Friendship Park, believing that my small act of hospitality will help keep the spark of hope alive for them.  This ministry of waiting moves me further down that imaginary line from first to last in our society.  I find that as I wait among the last and the least, I am coming to know God better.

Henri Nouwen beautifully described this truth in his journal, The Road to Daybreak.  Listen to his words: “If we truly want to see the glory of God, we must move downward with Jesus.  This is the deepest reason for living in solidarity with the poor, oppressed, and handicapped people.  They are the ones through whom God’s glory can manifest itself to us.  They show us the way to God, the way to salvation.”

At Friendship Park, I sometimes catch a glimpse of God’s glory.  I imagine Jesus waiting there on a park bench.  I think he would be right at home.  At Friendship Park, I’ve discovered that Jesus is not at the head of the line.  He’s not first at all.  Actually he’s way back at the end of the line, behind all the nobodies, behind my new friends.  There, Jesus waits for us to turn around and see the kingdom of heaven right in front of us.  There, at the back of the line, Jesus waits to welcome us home.