Morning Prayer on the Feast of St. Matthew was well attended, including our Sr. Warden and Treasurer, B, a homeless man, Betty of Blacknall Presbyterian, who had brought her usual casserole for breakfast fellowship, and a few other regulars. I talked to B after the service about the room he has been trying to rent. I’ve been trying to make a partial payment on his security deposit but things keep getting in the way. “Tuesday,” he told me, “’cause its gonna start gettin’ cold out here.”
B and I walked over to the Parish Hall for breakfast, though he said he didn’t want any. Slowly a few others gathered, a couple inside and a couple on the picnic tables. We warmed up some of the casserole Betty had by this time brought in and we had a few takers. One of the guys said he was looking for a cheap room and that he had money but wanted us to help find him a place. So B offered the list of rentals he had in his pocket.
It dawned on me to check email and I found that, after some negotiation, the place we wanted to be the new locale of our hospitality house for our two guys was being offered to us. This was good news. It’s at 920 9th Street and hardly a half-mile from St. Joseph’s. It’s a little more rent than we might have preferred to pay but all discernment pointed in this direction. I’m learning that such (relatively trivial!) insecurity is surely part of the evangelical poverty to which Christ directs us, however trained I have become to take refuge in a sort of worldly prudence. Isaiah told us this morning not to call conspiracy everything that the culture does and not to fear what they fear (Isa 8:12). The same must be true of what the world calls “responsible.”
--Colin
