I Met a Man & He Broke My Heart

Last night was just another typical Wednesday night.  Every Wednesday we prepare an inexpensive meal for our church family and serve it at our 'Summer Cafe' an hour before service.  We didn't have time to stop for gas on the way to church, so we drove up to the door on gas fumes.  When service was over and we finished chatting with everyone, we drove to the nearest gas station. 

As I walked inside to pay the attendant, I noticed a man near the pumps.  An almost sickly thin African American man in disheveled, stained clothing held a white plastic bag in his hands and he was very carefully picking through the contents of a nearby trash can.  I did a double take and wondered if maybe he worked there and perhaps he was emptying the garbage?

When I came back outside, he had moved on to another waste can beside another gas pump.  In his white plastic bag was now a crumpled McDonald's bag.  And I realized, he did not work there.  I went back in my car and closely watched him.  He was near my husband as he was pumping gas into our car.  But this man never looked up or asked for anything.  He just continued intently peering through and moving around the contents inside the garbage cans, earnestly looking for food. And my heart broke.

We've been approached several times by people that needed help with gas money at gas stations or food money at restaurants.  And if we've had any to spare, we've shared what we had.  But this was different.  This was very obviously a homeless, hungry, desperate and yet focused man.  He was without pride digging through a garbage can to find something to feed himself.  And yet he was prideful in that he did not ask us for a thing.

I turned to my son who was sitting in the back seat and asked him to hand me the 2 leftover sandwiches from the Summer Cafe' meal that we were taking home for a late night snack.  When my husband climbed back into our car from filling up our gas tank, I asked him if he'd noticed this man.  I pointed him out and explained what I had seen.  And at that very moment, the man was dragging one of the trash cans, minus its squeegee and minus its lid which were both haphazardly left near the gas pump.  He labouringly pulled it into a dark alcove behind the building to go through its contents more thoroughly.
  

I asked my husband if we could stop and give him our leftover food.  We drove to the rear of the building and the man was going through the trash can near the dumpster.  My husband opened our car door and asked the man, 'Do you work here?'.  He replied, 'Well, sometimes.'  'Are you hungry?' my husband asked. The man shuffled his feet and said, 'Maybe.'  My husband gave him the 2 sandwiches and told them they were made fresh that evening. The man hesitantly took the sandwiches and leaned in toward my husband and asked 'What time have you got there?' My husband said '9:18'. Then the man said, 'Alright, thank ya.'  And he walked away with the sandwiches.  And my heart broke.

As we drove home, I continued thinking about this man.  I recalled the scripture about 'entertaining angels unaware', but I knew he was no angel.  It shocked me that there could be someone so desperately in need in our small community.  It saddened me that I didn't have more to give him.  It grieved me that there are people that are forced to live in this way.  It tore my heart out that I can't provide a solution for him.  For the homeless.  For the hurting.

I came home and walked through the door of our house.  Our cool, air conditioned home. With doors we can lock.  With beds we can rest in.  With bathrooms and showers to take care of our bodies in.  With extra clothes to put on our bodies and a washer and dryer to clean our clothes with. With food in our pantry and our refrigerator.  What a blessed life we live.  There are times that I think how we don't have much, and how we need so much more, but compared to this man we met tonight, we have so much more than enough.

(Note: The pictures included in this blog are not my own, I found them randomly through flikr. I attempted linking them back to their original location but had some problems doing so. I in no way am claiming these as my own photos, they are merely included in the blog to lend a visual image of sorts to the words.)