I’m really struggling to write this post for a number of reasons. A couple of them are the fact that I am overwhelmed by the flood of thoughts and images running through my head and that I think that no matter what I write it won’t accurately convey the seriousness of what is going on right here in Fort Worth, Texas and across the US. I’m going to give it my best shot. Last night the Living Loud group that meets at my house every Wednesday decided to pass on meeting at my house and go to Pastor Lano’s church near downtown and help serve the almost 400 homeless people he feeds on Wednesday evenings. It had been a while since I’d been down there on a Wednesday and I was blown away by what I saw. I remember when homeless people looked like “homeless people” but that’s not the case any longer. What I saw were people that looked like a high school history teacher, the girl working at the mall, and the family of four you’d see shopping at Target. These people looked like real people because they are real people. I remember when I would lump all homeless people into one of four different categories: alcoholics, drug addicts, mentally unstable, or there by choice. My mental model was that if a person were homeless it was because of one of those four reasons 99.9% of the time. Why did I think that? Because I never took the time to get to know any of them. I never took the time to hear “their story”. When you take the time to get to know them you find out the reason why they look like a history teacher, or the girl at the mall, or the family shopping at Target is because that’s who they are! They aren’t homeless because have a drinking problem or because they are strung out on drugs. They don’t sleep in a tent because they’re crazy or just simply lazy. In fact many of these people are some of the most intelligent and interesting people you will ever have a conversation with. That is, if you take the time to listen. They are there because of circumstances. Because of the economy. One day that had it all and the next day it was gone. My plan is over the next several weeks to take you inside the lives of many of these people via my blog. I want you to get to know some of them and hear their stories. I want you to search your hearts and not just pray that their situation will change, but to ask God to show you how you can be a part of the solution. As I tell their stories I will also be challenging people to step up and stop talking about doing something and actually doing it. If you have a minute check out this site created by a homeless man documenting his journey: homeless journey