I caught up with Jesus one day a couple of years ago. He was hanging out in a dingy hospital room in Columbia, Kentucky.
His diabetes was acting up again, which was no surprise because dumpster-divers don’t have the best diet even on a good day. He had already lost a few toes here or there in the previous years, but this time he was facing the possible loss of his foot.
I’d actually been hanging out with Jesus for a couple of months, but I’m a little slow to recognize old friends.
It started when a guy named Bill came to church. You couldn’t miss him: a rumple of a man well over six-foot tall, with shaggy wrinkled clothes topped off by a white beard and white hair, neither of which had seen a comb in weeks. Everything about him screamed homeless.
Bill’s massive frame ambled along slowly as the result of his missing toes. The only thing more worrisome than whether he would make it to the coffee bar without falling was the possibility that he would make it to the coffee bar and then try to walk away holding his hot coffee.
Bill and his coffee made it safely to one of our café-style tables, so I introduced myself. I did so more out of a concern for others’ safety than to make him feel welcome. (When you see people like Bill, your first thoughts are about the possibilities of what could go wrong.) I wanted to check him out first-hand.
Everything about Bill was confusing. Where are you from? I used to drive a truck in the Northeast. How’d you hear about our church? I drove by the other day. Tell me about your family: I think they’re in Indiana, at least, they were the last time I talked to them.
When the service started, Bill worshipped the same way most of us did, except he was taller, shabbier and scarier than the rest of us. He raised his hands and tilted his head upward, soaking in the genuine praise around him.
Bill became a regular among us. He introduced us to the people in his entourage. He took care of Roberta: 60-plus years old, short, loud and extremely off-putting. Plus, she was pretty ugly. One week, Bill pulled me aside and apologized for her behavior and explained that her family had thrown her out on the street. He said he was now her only protection. They lived together in an abandoned mobile home out in the county. There didn’t seem to be anything awkward about the arrangement because Roberta definitely needed protection, mostly from herself.
