Today was my first day as a volunteer at Union Gospel Mission. I had gone through the volunteer orientation and interview earlier in the summer and was looking forward to helping out at the women's drop-in centre. However, with the passing of time and church being extremely busy in the past month, the initial excitement and anticipation of volunteering at UGM had sort of died down. I found myself not really wanting to go last night, and feeling nervous about having to bus down to the downtown east side alone.
God is truly so good to me. I spent the morning at school and as I was wrapping things up to get ready to leave for UGM, I thought I had better look up the bus route (I left it to the last minute, unlike me unless I wasn't really looking forward to something). I had planned on going home to drop off my computer and change before heading out, and I was sure I had to make a few transfers before getting to my destination. To my utter amazement, google map told me that ONE busy would take me 5 minutes from my house, to about 1 minute from UGM. He is really good to me :) :) :) It's as if the convenient route had been laid out there for me all along, and I just had to discover it! Thanks God for the no. 16 bus!
I spent the afternoon at UGM helping out with setting up a meal, sat in on part of the worship service that the women were invited to come to before eating, helped clean up, talked to a few people, and talked to the volunteer coordinator for a while. All in all, it was nothing too spectacular - no tears streaming down my eyes, no major transformation of my heart, no fireworks. Yet, God's spirit was quietly at work. After I left and got onto the bus going up East Hastings to West Hastings, I looked outside the window at the people gathered outside of buildings with their bags and their shopping karts and for the first time I think I saw them in a different light. Before I always had pity for them, and I felt sad that they had to live in this condition. But today, I simply saw them as human beings, and felt that really, we weren't all that different. It's a strange feeling really, one that you often hear people talk about but you never really experience yourself.
After leaving UGM, I felt more human than before. I felt real. Seeing all the women at the drop in, obviously broken people from the inside out, I questioned, "Aren't we all broken inside somewhere, somehow?" See this guy walking on West Hastings in his fancy suit and brief case, the young Asian man checking his Blackberry, see that woman with the push up bra and the pretty dress, another woman with the lovely purple scarf draped around her shoulders. They seem to be put together on the outside, but who are they on the inside? At UGM you can see the brokenness of the people right from the get go, it shows in their appearance and their demeanor, and it makes them so genuine, so real.
What makes this guy with the sporty sun glasses carrying the starbucks latte in his hands different from this other guy wearing a ragged t-shirt carrying a big bag of well... bags...? Circumstances perhaps? Luck? For some reason, I finally could see a glimpse of how God sees people - we are all the same to Him, plus or minus a PhD, plus or minus a criminal record, plus or minus an abusive husband... He loves us each just the same, and we are his children.
As King Solomon once lamented, "Meaningless, Meaningless! Everything is meaningless!" Why do we toil to look so put together on the outside, while hiding our brokenness on the inside? God knows who we each are, and all that is within our hearts. And I think he is knocking a the door of them, asking to come in. He wants to give us REAL life, life that is eternal. Jesus wants to show us the way to true fulfillment. Praise God!
God is truly so good to me. I spent the morning at school and as I was wrapping things up to get ready to leave for UGM, I thought I had better look up the bus route (I left it to the last minute, unlike me unless I wasn't really looking forward to something). I had planned on going home to drop off my computer and change before heading out, and I was sure I had to make a few transfers before getting to my destination. To my utter amazement, google map told me that ONE busy would take me 5 minutes from my house, to about 1 minute from UGM. He is really good to me :) :) :) It's as if the convenient route had been laid out there for me all along, and I just had to discover it! Thanks God for the no. 16 bus!
I spent the afternoon at UGM helping out with setting up a meal, sat in on part of the worship service that the women were invited to come to before eating, helped clean up, talked to a few people, and talked to the volunteer coordinator for a while. All in all, it was nothing too spectacular - no tears streaming down my eyes, no major transformation of my heart, no fireworks. Yet, God's spirit was quietly at work. After I left and got onto the bus going up East Hastings to West Hastings, I looked outside the window at the people gathered outside of buildings with their bags and their shopping karts and for the first time I think I saw them in a different light. Before I always had pity for them, and I felt sad that they had to live in this condition. But today, I simply saw them as human beings, and felt that really, we weren't all that different. It's a strange feeling really, one that you often hear people talk about but you never really experience yourself.
After leaving UGM, I felt more human than before. I felt real. Seeing all the women at the drop in, obviously broken people from the inside out, I questioned, "Aren't we all broken inside somewhere, somehow?" See this guy walking on West Hastings in his fancy suit and brief case, the young Asian man checking his Blackberry, see that woman with the push up bra and the pretty dress, another woman with the lovely purple scarf draped around her shoulders. They seem to be put together on the outside, but who are they on the inside? At UGM you can see the brokenness of the people right from the get go, it shows in their appearance and their demeanor, and it makes them so genuine, so real.
What makes this guy with the sporty sun glasses carrying the starbucks latte in his hands different from this other guy wearing a ragged t-shirt carrying a big bag of well... bags...? Circumstances perhaps? Luck? For some reason, I finally could see a glimpse of how God sees people - we are all the same to Him, plus or minus a PhD, plus or minus a criminal record, plus or minus an abusive husband... He loves us each just the same, and we are his children.
As King Solomon once lamented, "Meaningless, Meaningless! Everything is meaningless!" Why do we toil to look so put together on the outside, while hiding our brokenness on the inside? God knows who we each are, and all that is within our hearts. And I think he is knocking a the door of them, asking to come in. He wants to give us REAL life, life that is eternal. Jesus wants to show us the way to true fulfillment. Praise God!
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