On these hang all the law and the prophets
One night last fall, I stopped at McDonald’s to grab dinner for the family after a men’s event at church. Outside the car in the parking lot, there was a homeless man holding a sign asking for help. Sadly, this has become a common sight now that we’ve moved from Wisconsin to California.
God has been dealing with me over the last decade, changing the way I see homelessness.
I met a man named Kyle this week at a men’s prayer group. He’s the fourth Kyle I’ve met in the last few months.
There’s an old riddle that asks, “What belongs to you but others use it more than you do?” The answer is, of course, “your name.” Not only are our names mostly used by other people, but for the most part, we don’t even get to pick our own names either. Someone else gave us our names when we were born. We may be fine with the name on our driver’s license, or we may wonder what our parents could possibly have been thinking the day we were born.
Sometimes God speaks to me. Actually, He speaks a lot, but I only listen sometimes. After a lifetime of loving God, I’m still learning to listen to His voice. Sometimes it seems loud and clear. Other times it takes a while to understand as if I was listening to Kelly explain something from another room. I can catch a few key points but have to listen with intent to get the whole message. Even then, sometimes parts need to be repeated.
I grew up and learned to drive in California’s Central Valley. With a December birthday, I turned 16—and got my drivers license—right as we were headed into the winter months.
For the most part, winters were fairly mild where I lived. I think it snowed less than 1/2″ total the entire 25 years that I lived there. But temperatures would often drop into the 20s for several days at a time, and since our winters were humid, we would often experience dense fog.
This morning at men’s prayer God gave me some words, and I finally spoke them. Later I said, “I’m more of a ‘write it down’ guy that a ‘say it out loud’ guy.” One of the other guys immediately asked me, “Who told you that?” That limitation didn’t come from God.