My Samaria

My Samaria



Sneers along with a yell-“hey what’s that you got?’ ‘Is that a Bible? Ha Ha Ha!” The raw smell of the guy sitting down at the table next to me. The hard looks from the kids who should be home watching TV, playing video games or getting ready for dinner. Instead they fly their colors as they walk buy flashing their bling, expressing a bravado of hard looks while working their brand of intimidation.

A teenage girl walks by infant, in a stroller that has seen better days. There is a small boy following her. She interrupts her conversation on her cell phone long enough to yell at him impatiently to keep up. A car pulls up where we sit; loud rap music, grabs the attention of everyone around. Young men tatted out looking like they would intimate the Pope.


Wondering, wondering, what's their story, what brought them here tonight?


We begin to pray, people slow to watch, looking at the Bibles sitting on the table. They wonder in curiosity what a couple of guys are doing reading their Bible out loud, talking about Jesus and praying together. An older man stops buy to tell his story of how the church mistreated him when he was a young boy. Willie struggles to form the words in any distinguishable format. The attempt to drown out the pain and confusion has been accomplished today by what smells like cheap wine. The combination of the alcohol and the smell of a cigarette Willie just put out is enough to cause me to want to pull back from the hug he offers. The truth is Willy needs the hug, because he is broken and rejected. Willie has been back several weeks in a row. He says he doesn’t understand why he keeps coming back but Willie hears about God’s love and desire to be in a close friendship with him. Willie doesn’t know he is being drawn by God's Spirit

A lady is handing out Bible tracts. She’s convinced someone needs a multicolored blanket she has with her. Dressed in an array of eclectic taste in clothing, Sister Clare has a story of grand proportions. She use to live in Hollywood as a stand in for several movies which lead her to Paris as a backup singer for Ella Fitzgerald.

This is where the gospel is alive. These are the people we are afraid to interact with. This is Samaria.

I love handing out hope where there is no hope for tomorrow. All that matters here is what will happen next. How to survive, escaping the pain life has handed out in doses that come by the truck load.

People need hope, even in small amounts. People are still people and God is still God, who by the way is in the business of hope.

Jesus passed through a town called Samaria on his way to Galilee to Jerusalem instead of going around like most Jews of his day. The Samaritans were viewed as lower than dogs. Samaritans were scary. They were gang members and prostitutes, murders lived in that part of town. The thought of the Samaritans generated a repulsive thought. People who were unsafe and to be avoided. Routine travel consisted of four days around Samaria, instead of the shorter route through Samaria that took only two days. Jesus chose to travel through Samaria where he encountered a woman who needed to be accepted and given the hope of a new start.

Life is all around us. We make a choice not to look at the unpleasant parts of it.

What does today's Samaria look like to us?

I love the reality of "Street Gospel" and the dramatic difference it can make. Honesty is a requirement and nothing else will be accepted. Accountability is quick. There is an interesting sense of honor in a way that feels out of place but very real none the less. There is a real taste of strength in love found here. The challenge of not wanting to return, along side of the love for this kind of gritty truth is a paradox that is real and strong.

Being Samaria driven and living like a church that looks like heaven takes courage and commitment to the vision of loving like God loves, regardless of what people look or sound like.

I am under construction and being formed into his image. On occasion I am blessed with a view of how Jesus looks at what we call life in the humanness we struggle with each day. His ways are higher than mine and his thoughts are loving at all times toward everyone. Regardless of what we look like or sound like.

Your Samaria may look different than mine. That doesn’t change the command to go and hand out hope where it’s needed.

“You shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth."