homelessness

I've been thinking about the homeless a lot lately. This morning it seemed a good analogy for something I read in Hebrews 11:37b,38...that I don't fully understand.

"They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated - the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground."

This is the "faith chapter" describing early Christians and the patriarchs. I was thinking homelessness is an interesting analogy because homelessness is much less having nowhere to sleep, than it is belonging to nowhere. It is being disconnected from family, community, work identity, normal responsibilities, and feelings of hope. It is despair and desperation and tiredness most of the time. You expect how people see you, and people don't know how to look at you when they don't know how to connect you. There are two things, two original things happening every day: God's things and things of the world. Homeless people I think more often then not, become homeless, without identity and belonging, because sin, disease, and personal pride infect us and them, such that we become "us" and "them". We disconnect. We separate. We very naively contribute to effacing another's worth because we think we don't belong together. That's indecent. It's foolish and cold. That's a tragedy. In fact, if I was homeless I don't think I'd want to associate with persons who, even before meeting me, drew those lines of "them" and "me". I think most homelessness is probably because people want to belong to themselves, their goals, their things, their people, their vices, their egos...even homeless people do this. So then, how do we belong together? How do I care less for me? That's not for me to explain today.

In Hebrews it talks of Gideon, Barak, Samson, David, and Samuel...all men who did some very big things. Then right after that, it mentions women receiving back from the dead their loved ones. I can only think that this is because more often women have very tender spirits to the Lord. Then we read of those persecuted, who "wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground." The world ostracized them, but that's to be expected. Those people belonged to heaven. That's a different kind of homelessness...a hopeful one. Heaven was home. Jesus walked the Earth. He demonstrated how to how to find heaven and live here, on Earth.

...this expectation of not belonging here, this disenchanted "knowing" everything under the sun as Solomon talks about, everything we expect and hope for from this world and all its fascinations...is a small indication that this is not home. We can taste it and nothing else tastes right. "Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart." Jer. 29:12,13

"Come to me all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest." Matt. 11:28