I’m sitting here on Saturday
night in the nearly-empty Corner Bakery Café (much like a Panera with a Chicago
twist) on the corner of State and Cedar. Outside, cars and taxis are honking at
each other for probably no reason other than selfish impatience; Ambulances go
by every half hour or so, each with a completely different, earth-shattering siren;
all the while, the voice of Lana Del Rey is consoling my ears with gentle pulses of beautifully broken lyrics. How can something be both broken and beautiful,
you ask? Well, if you’ve ever been to a city like Chicago and opened your eyes to the people around you, you might just understand.
I’m not saying that brokenness is
in anyway something desired or by definition beautiful, but with brokenness
there is so much potential for beauty to come out of it. Every time I pass the
homeless man standing across the street from the Willis Tower, I wonder who he
is, where he came from, where he is going, and why he always has a smile on his
60-year-old face and still says “God bless” to every person who doesn't give
him their spare change, as well as those who do. That aged face has probably seen
things I could not imagine and most likely, his story in life will not end
well; it’s a very cold winter, and it’s not getting any warmer for the man or woman on the street. Yes, maybe he’s just looking for drug money and maybe he’s
one of those homeless people who doesn’t want to work and just expects handouts,
but what if he’s not? And how am I, as a capable giver, supposed to distinguish
that? I can’t. The warm smile that ensues from his cold face is enough to tell
me that it’s at least worth a shot to help him out, even if it’s only with 50 cents.
The beautiful part is that the
homeless man can still manage a smile, even if it is a broken one. Even more
beautiful, is that his brokenness gives someone, anyone an opportunity to do something
beautiful. I’m not talking about government handouts, but to clothe him with a
warm jacket; to return a warm smile from a similarly cold face; to buy him
lunch; to give him a job opportunity; to spend time with him and others at a
shelter. The point is not to do these acts to make yourself feel like a “good” person;
we’re no better than the prostitute standing in the shadows of the train
station, waiting for her next customer. Instead, we should do these things to
show that God is still present, even in the darkest places that seemingly have no
hope. Jesus didn’t hang out with the disciples 24/7. He went after the tax
collectors and the prostitutes. He was a light in a dark place and we’re
supposed to mimic that. Now I will be the first to admit that this is not easy at
all. First of all, I don’t have enough money to give to every homeless person I
pass or else I would be homeless too. Second, I don’t want to put myself in
potentially dangerous situations. And third, I don’t always have the most
giving heart.
These past two weeks in Chicago
have got me thinking, though, about what I can do to help those who have so little
in life. I’m not saying I’m going to go out tomorrow and feed the 5,000, but it
wouldn’t hurt me to flash a warm smile or hand someone a sandwich from time-to-time,
rather than walk by as fast as I can without making eye contact. Every once in
a while, I might get a creepy, one-tooth smile back along with a Joey Tribbiani “How
you doin’?”, but I guess that’s why I brought pepper spray and learned how to
speed walk when I became friends with Jennifer Van Der Hoek sophomore year (if
anyone has ever seen Jenn walk to class, they will understand). All jokes
aside, this broken city has more potential for beauty than originally meets the
eye. You may just have to stand still for a while and let your eyes adjust in the darkness.
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