Our New Christmas Tradition

It all started with discontent and a conversation on Halloween.
Well, it started long before that really, but that would take a while to tell about those seeds. But Halloween was when those seeds turned to sprouts and several weeks later some little fruits appeared.

So it goes like this...
I don't recall exactly how, but the canned milk version (you know, sweetened and condensed) starts with a conversation I had with my friend Brian. We were going on about Christmas consumerism, children's wish lists and post Thanksgiving Day riots and the line was thrown out "We should go make breakfast for the homeless" or something along those lines. I think at that point we realized that this was something we needed to actually act on. In the next week or so rough plans were made for a trial run in early December.
I will just be honest, in the back of my mind I really hoped, just a little bit, that there would be some really good reason that it just wouldn't work out to do this. I've always been the guy to sneer at the bum holding a cardboard sign on a street corner. Or looked with a wrinkled up nose at a transient passed out in an alley. I've gladly, mercilessly, kicked homeless trespassers out of the laundry rooms my employer owns. Once, several years ago, I was heading home after making a few craigslist sales and had 700 or $800 in hand as I pulled off the freeway. And right there was some guy begging for my money. He was only a few feet away. I picked up my stack of cash and thumbed slowly through it as he watched until the light turned green. Really doing the Lords work there, Josh. What a shame.
But no deviation of our plans came. Brian didn't back out. I didn't plan something "by accident" to derail our breakfast with the homeless. I was actually starting to feel some excitement overcoming my trepidation. We planned our parts of the meal and what we would bring and where we would go. We discussed our hope of what this would become. Our intentions for our families involvement. How we could use this to actually honor our Savior, especially on the day that we usually set aside to honor Him.

A couple days before the "big day" Carin asked what our plans were, how it was going to go and if this was a wise use of our resources. Though Brian and I did have a basic plan for what we wanted to do we had no idea if it would work. We never had experience in this kind of thing. We didn't know if the areas we were planning on going would have the people we were looking for. We didn't know if what we were doing was legal (Nor did we care, actually). We didn't know how we'd be received. But, I told Carin, one thing I was sure of is that some way, some how God had impressed on my heart and Brian's that this is what we needed to do. It was the same clear headed kick in the butt feeling I had when I decided to go on my first mission trip. The same feeling when I knew Carin was going to be my wife. The same in my gut, in my heart, clearly this is what I was meant to do kind of feeling that I have had on a handful of occasions. I didn't have answers to all my questions or hers but I knew this was something that I needed to do.
Now, some of the people that are reading this are rightly thinking "Big deal! You are helping people out. Its not scary, its fun!" And you people are right. And you are much more mature than me. And maybe you are predisposed to this kind of ministry. Maybe the churches you've grown up in do this kind of thing. I haven't. The churches I've grown up in (my present church not included) never did anything like this. The attitude always seemed to be "That's good for somebody else to do" or "I sent a check to the Gospel Mission" or even "Those that are doing it aren't doing it right so we can't help them". And so for me it is scary. Its uncomfortable. It really does require faith. I'm a chicken.

And so the morning came. We had decided to make breakfast just like we did when camping. Brian and I loaded a few bags of oranges and bananas, a coffee maker, a cooler with four dozen eggs, six pounds of ground breakfast sausage, a bag of tortillas, and bag of chocolates, and a Coleman stove into the back of his truck.
Arriving in Seattle we parked under I-5 on the side of the road and across the street from a row of blue tarps, lumpy sleeping bags and dirty backpacks. After realizing that our coffee maker setup was a no-go we got the first three or four breakfast burritos wrapped in foil, grabbed a sack of fruit and jumped the guard rail. A sleeping bag stirred and an eye stared up at us. "Would you like some hot breakfast?" I said. "And how 'bout a banana or an orange?" Brian offered. The smile that cracked across that homeless mans face immediately killed my fear and doubt. This was incredible!

Over the next two hours or so Brian and I handed out 50+ bfast burritos. We ran out of food to soon. We drove away planning our next trip.

This Christmas morning our friend Minta, Carin, Ethan and I loaded up the Subaru with a cooler full of bacon and eggs and tortillas and fruit and chocolates. We got to hand out even more breakfast burritos and fruit than before. And Ethan fearlessly gave chocolates to everyone he met. And that is my goal in all of this. To train not just myself to have compassion for others, but to lead my family in that compassion. For Ethan to grow up a better man than me. To remember that Jesus, my Savior, looked at my wretched self, not with scorn but with compassion. He reached out to me when I had nothing to offer and offered me hope. And life. For me to hold back compassion, as I have in the past, is not only shameful, it is not like my Father. On Christmas we celebrate Gods condescension to the flesh, becoming like us so that eventually He could die in our place. And when we help the helpless we can be imitators of our God. And that seems like a good way to celebrate Him.

I think we found a new Christmas tradition. But I think we'll have to practice this tradition throughout the year.