Cold Days, Warm Hearts and Jesus

Every Thursday this summer at YouthWorks sites, students will be talking about “The King over the Upside-Down Kingdom” – specifically about how Jesus, our King, has called us all to be servants, just as He was.

Many times, I have volunteered at places that help homeless people – with food, clothes, toiletries, haircuts, etc. But when thinking about the way Jesus served, I realized that requires the homeless people to seek me. I am not saying that those Soup Kitchens and Clothing Pantries are not great – they really are and I will continue volunteering at them – but I want to be more intentional with the way I serve.

Last week there was some snow and a ton of ice all over the roads and sidewalks. One night I was really hoping that there would be enough ice on the roads that we would not be able to have classes the next day.

Then, I was walking to the gas station near my residence hall to get some food, and it was freezing and hard to walk on the ice. It was then that I realized how lucky I was to be able to go back inside and sleep in my warm bed. There were plenty of homeless people that were going to have to sleep outside in this. I felt really bad for wishing for so much ice, because that was rather selfish of me. I knew that there was no way that I – a Florida girl through and through – could ever imagine making it through an icy night outside, so I decided I really wanted to reach out and seek for homeless people who maybe needed some help.

I wanted to take them blankets and a couple of my friends wanted to take them food, so the next day we went out and bought twelve blankets and twenty McDoubles and apple pies from McDonald’s. We are college students, so we do not all have a ton of money piled up in our bank accounts, but we knew that we have so much more than any of those homeless people and we also knew that God would provide for us.

Once we had the blankets and food, we set out to find homeless people to give these things to. We went under bridges, stopped at intersections, and searched around the public library (apparently a hotspot for homeless people in our city). But it was extremely difficult to find them! We went under one bridge and there were probably twenty “beds” set up where homeless people lived, but there were only two people there because the rest of them had gotten into a church the night before. It was amazing that churches opened their doors for these people when it was so cold, but that was the reason it was so hard to find people. We spent about three hours searching the city and eventually got rid of all our supplies.

I was able to learn a lot from this experience, like the value of seeking others out, stepping out of my comfort zone, and trusting that God will provide when we try to do His work. I also learned something humbling: I am not going to change the world. There were other people (like the churches) who were helping these homeless people. I went out into the city expecting to easily find people to help, but it proved to be very difficult. I cannot do anything alone, and unless we come together as a group – as Christ followers – we are not going to be able to accomplish everything that God wants us to do.

The devil is far too big for me to conquer alone; even for a group of us, Satan has too much power. It is when we turn to God that we are able to start to overcome the devil. An example of that was shown when we were out trying to find homeless people and we were failing, we stopped and stood in a circle in front of the public library and prayed that we would find people who needed our help. Not five minutes later we found people and within thirty minutes we had handed out the rest of our supplies.

Katie Nation is a student at Methodist University where she plays soccer and is studying Health Care Administration. Katie’s biggest obsessions are Jesus, Harry Potter, and Netflix, and is trying to force herself to become obsessed with cooking so she can actually learn to feed herself and not depend on the cafeteria. Katie is looking forward to her first summer as a YouthWorks summer staff.