I have been reading Under the Overpass by Mike Yankoski. Its a wonderful testimony of what can happen when you step into the need around you. Mike and his friend Sam dedicated 3 months to living as homeless men to discover what needs lie right in front of us on Ameircna soil. Some of the points Mike makes in his book are great thoughtful nuggets for everday life:

"We were created to be and do, not merely to discuss. The hypocrisy in my life troubled me. No, I wasn't in the grip of rampant sin, but at the same time, for the life of me I couldn't find a connecting thread of radical, living obedience between what I said and how I lived in it"

"Psalm 34:18 says, "The LORD is close to the brokenhearted." I wonder if pretending that you're not brokenhearted keeps GOD at a distance."

"If we are the body of CHRIST-and CHRIST came not for the healthy, but for the sick-we need to be fully present in the places where people are most broken. And it has to be more than just a financial presence. That helps, of course. But too often money is insulation-it conveniently keeps us from having to come face to face with a man or woman whose life is in tatters."

"Think about it: if you see someone dangling precariously off a cliff you might warn them about falling to his death but it would make more sense to throw him a rope."

After recieving lunch at a local church..."we sholdered our packs and walked out, we heard the janitor locking the church doors behind us. A church is just a building if there's no one in it."

After Mike and Sam's first go at panhandling he noted..."In his book The Ragamuffin Gospel, Brennan Manning writes, 'We are equally priviledged but unentitledbeggars at the door of GOD's mercy.' I though about that as person after person walked past without donating or even making eye contact. I felt my frustration rising until I realized how unentitled I really was. No one deserves mercy. And no one walking by owed us a dime. Mercy is, by definition, undeserved, or else it isn't mercy. Every coin in the case looked different after that."

After overhearing a husband and wife walk by discussing " the gift of giving and the wisdom of the HOLY SPIRIT" Mike noticed that kids "haven't learned to ignore what they see, so they can actually take in the world as it is. While kids might pretend people who don't exist do, it;s the parents who pretend that unwanted people who do exist don't"

The book has helped me to recognize that the mission front is not just abroad. There are people here in the States that I don't look at or respond to because I feel entitled not to. But CHRIST died for them, and I sit beside them at the door of GOD's grace like all of us.