Some rather disjointed thoughts regarding an afternoon walk, my conviction of self-indulgence, and an encounter with a homeless man

I have a routine of walking for about thirty minutes or so after I arrive home from work. The usual route takes me down a road, one not much more than a stones throw from my home in a lower-middle class neighborhood, that is mostly framed with wetlands, beaver dams, lush woods, and an old, abandoned railroad spur off of a railway, still in use, where gravel was once off-loaded from the train cars into dump trucks. Here, along this road, I have watched egrets and hawks in flight; I have observed a doe with fawn crossing the road, and I have seen beaver swimming in pools formed by dams of their own design and creation. I have also encountered other things.

I remember, perhaps three years ago, while walking this road on a particularly windy March afternoon, a splash of color, what looked like a red sheet, caught on low branch of a pine tree along the edge of a clearing. The next day, I noticed another splash of color at another point along the meadow. I, being of a somewhat inquisitive nature, decided to soon investigate.

A couple of days later, rather than turning onto the aforementioned road as I usually do, I walked a bit further and entered a clearing via an old access road that took me through the yard where, years ago, dump trucks would leave with loads of gravel. Past the old yard, I walked along a deep perimeter of pine trees behind which lay the train tracks. Near where I saw the splash of color the previous two days, I saw a small tent hidden away in the trees, along with evidence of current habitation. It was surrounded by empty bottles of soft drink; there were shirts and pants hanging from cords strung between pine trees, and well-defined paths meandered through the stand of pines.

I walked a bit further and found something a bit disconcerting. I saw a man, his back to me and apparently unaware of my presence, who seemed to be having an animated conversation with parties unseen. Now, he could have been talking on a cell phone for all I know, but that is not the impression I was left with. He also, seemed, at the time, to be about six and half feet tall.

For self-evident reasons, prudence seemed to be the course of action, so I quietly left the area, drawing as little attention to myself as possible, and quickly walked home. Before my current employment, I had worked for a few years as a non-professional in mental health care. My experience, reinforced by common sense, led me to believe that I had witnessed someone with either a drug abuse issue, a mental heath issue such as schizophrenia, or perhaps a combination of both. The story could end here, but it does not.

I rolled the events of that day over and over in my mind for a couple of days, and developed a strong conviction that I should revisit the scene. To be honest, I really did not want to. This tension was, however, beginning to be contextualized in my mind within the framework of my confession of Christianity. What of the authenticity of my trust in my Messiah if I let my concerns over potential danger override what I felt to be a real and true prompting?

After a few days, I went for my afternoon walk and, with mixed emotions, revisited the campsite. I called out a greeting out as I approached and was met by a man who seemed to be about my age, about my 5′9″ height, and weighing about 150 pounds, quite a few pounds shy of my weight. He also seemed to be quite pleasant and in full possession of all his facilities. Where was the six and a half foot tall maniac I witnessed a few days before?

After speaking with him a bit, I began to feel a bit more comfortable with the situation. I found out a few things about him, but out of courtesy, I did not pry too deeply into the how and why of his circumstances. Over a year or so, I would often visit him for short periods of time. I helped him as I could; I would bring him food and articles to make his life more comfortable. I made calls and tried to arrange the logistics of getting him into a shelter, but he seemed quite resistant to leaving his tent. I also called a couple of churches to elicit help, but none ever materialized. Also, his name was Joel.

He spoke of a relative, a brother who lived nearby, with whom he would stay when the weather turned heavy and cold which alleviated my concern about his well-being to a small degree. Occasionally, we talked about things of faith and he spoke of his confidence in Christ, and he spoke in a way that left me no doubt about his understanding and sincerity and trueness of faith. Among his possessions was a Bible and a radio that he used to listen to religious broadcasts. In all my conversations with him, I never saw any evidence of mental aberration in any of his speech or behavior. It is interesting that our conversations would often take up, almost to the sentence, where we had left a week earlier. It was as if there was, for him, no lag or gap in our conversation.

Over time, especially during the more temperate days of late summer and early fall, I saw less and less of Joel. Sometimes I would visit, but he would be elsewhere. Sometimes, I honestly just did not make a concerted effort to visit. Driving home from work one evening, I saw, at the entrance to the clearing leading to his tent, a couple of trucks with two or three people standing nearby. The next day, a Saturday, I walked to his tent and found the area cordoned off with yellow tape; what used to be a unobtrusive camp, a hidden refuge for a homeless man, now had the appearance of crime scene. Joel’s tent was in shambles. The trucks I saw parked at the entrance to the clearing belonged to EMTs.

I called a the sheriffs department a couple of days later and got a little bit of information, and my worst suspensions were confirmed. His body was found in an advanced state of decomposition. I was told his death, though the coroner did not have much to work with, was probably by natural causes.

From the aforementioned experiences, the furniture of my mind has been shuffled around a bit. One, least it be thought that I take any kind of spiritual pride in my interactions in helping a homeless man, forget that immediately. What I am is convicted and chastened. What I did not give freely was my time. What I did not give freely was myself. Followers of Christ are often taught, sometimes wisely and sometimes in ways that are quite erroneous, that how they manage their money is reflective of their spiritual state, a metric of their spiritual maturity and affirmation of the lordship of Christ. I would also say that how we spend our time is reflective of our spiritual maturity. I mentioned before how a conversation interrupted by my departure would be taken up by Joel at the point we left off upon seeing him again a week later. This is a man who did not have much contact with others and, and though a bit of a hermit, seem to relished what contact he did experience.

I have also learned than my expectations of outcomes, be it from prayer or be it from my effort, may not always be harmonious with the will of the One to Who I pray. One thing that I often petitioned God for was that Joel find shelter. Now, I entertained the idea of bringing him into our small house, but I will be honest. As much as I trusted Joel, I did not think it prudent to bring him into my home, nor do I think he would have accepted such an offer; I did not know him that well that I should take any risk in endangering my family, my wife and young son. He had also resisted my attempts to obtain for him a bed at a shelter. He also had family nearby. I managed to assuage my middle-class quilt a bit.

I wrestled with the fact that I fervently prayed that he find shelter, and, at the risk of sounding trite and sentimental, he did, thought perhaps not in a way that I assumed and hoped. I wrestled with the fact that a child of God died homeless and unattended till little was left of his now empty tent of flesh. Going back to redeeming our time, I wrestled with the fact that I sometimes sinfully neglected his well-being while I pursued my own sometimes self-indulgent interests. I still wrestle with that tendency.

Life goes on. I still walk that road, and when I walk, I use that time to reflect, to pray, and to think thoughts that may, from time to time, find themselves on this web journal. In the intervening days and years and in ways that I do not clearly understand, I have developed a deeper, more profound assertion, understanding, and acceptance of God’s absolute wisdom and sovereignty. I understand a bit more clearly, too, that the travails of this present age cannot begin to compare to the unspeakable joy of one day finding myself, as did Joel, forever, by His redeeming grace, in the presence of our Savior.

A note of irony with which to end: Joel’s brother whom he sometimes referred to in our conversations turned out to be, as I found in Joel’s obituary, my next-door neighbor.

Philippians 1:6
being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.

1 John 4:11-12

Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.

John 13:35

By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

Romans 8:28-30

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.