We Like to Think We Think

God always wants it all.

That's why the Eucharist isn't merely bread and wine, and isn't a symbol, and isn't anything less than everything.

That's why we are the bride to the bridegroom, the church to Christ.  That's why marriage is sacred and sacramental, and supposed to be a total self giving.  Because God doesn't do half measures or gestures or well meaning symbols.  God is always all in and God always wants our hearts all in.  God doesn't want us just to need Him, but to Love Him.  He doesn't want us just to tolerate our neighbors, but to love them.  God wants us always all in.

So today, I'm asking people to go all in.

I have a friend from three years of writing.  We've never met face to face, but she's helped with my writing, she's encouraged me when things got tough, and she's always been kind.  She is a veteran.  She suffers from a debilitating condition.   Tonight, baring a miracle in Ann Arbor or Oakland County, Michigan, baring someone going all in, she will be sleeping outside and she is scared.  I am scared for her.

Today, where I live, it is mucky and wet, cool and unpleasant to be outside.  I do not have to be.  However I stood outside today, forcing myself to take in the minor discomfort.

I don't know what it is like, to sleep without a roof.

I don't know what it is like, to feel unwanted on sight, to have no place where the doors are thrown open because it is you in particular.  

I don't know what it is like, to have to fear not merely the dark or the cold or the trash, or the looks of others, but also the whole community, because I cannot tell the state of anyone else around me. I do not know that level of edge, the veneer of safety and security having a place called home gives.

Some people have seen me post to my friend's Go Fund Me page, you may be tired of it, but take a moment to think how tired you would be, if there were no place you could stop and safely call it an end to the day.   No place to rest.   I don't want to imagine, except I know my friend, doesn't have to.

Consider giving.  We are so many. We have so much.  This is a little act of courage, of hope, of salt, of light, of goodness, of comfort, of warmth, of rest.

 Click here to help!

“Christians who stay still, who don't go forward, are non-Christian Christians. We don’t know exactly what they are. They are slightly ‘paganized’ Christians: who are there, who stay still and don’t go forward in their Christian lives, who don’t make the Beatitudes bloom in their lives, who don’t do Works of mercy… they are motionless. Excuse me for saying it, but they are like an (embalmed) mummy, a spiritual mummy there. There are Christians who are ‘spiritual mummies,’ motionless, there. They don’t do evil but they don’t do good things.” --Pope Francis

Here's a chance to do a good thing.
For the cynics: Will there be need tomorrow? Yes.  Will there be other needs tomorrow from other places? Yes.   However right now, you know about this need, from this person, and have the rare opportunity, to make tonight a night where she has a roof.