A visitor at choir practice

During choir rehearsal, an elderly fellow came by for some help and encouragement. He has been out of prison for about six weeks or so, and has been sleeping on a friend's floor. He has a minimum wage job at a fast-food restaurant, and has been trying to put his life back together. We have helped him a couple of times in small ways – mostly, giving him quarters to do his laundry, because he has to show up in a clean uniform to keep his job.

Tonight, he was in a fix. The landlord found out about him staying with his friend, and threw him out; his friend almost got evicted too for breaking the lease. He stayed last night in one of the Occupy movement tents – but it happens that they, too, are being evicted tomorrow. He cannot stay in the homeless shelter because he was in a fight there some years ago and has been banned for life. We gave him a little bit of money, not enough, and suggested that he can take a shower at the recreation center before going to work tomorrow evening. I think it meant more to him that we cared about his dilemma.

As soon as he left, we turned to the next item in our rehearsal, the Psalm for Sunday. Almost immediately, we encountered this:

For he does not despise nor abhor the poor in their poverty;
neither does he hide his face from them;
but when they cry to him he hears them. (Psalm 22:23)

I don't know what is going to become of this fellow. He probably has a tent over his head tonight, but not tomorrow. It is still winter. The United States has become a hard and unfriendly country where the arrogant rich who run the place care nothing for the poor. And there are a lot of them, more all the time.

But God cares: When they cry to him, he hears them.

[Edit, in April: He now has a roof over his head -- he was arrested recently for breaking and entering, and charged additionally with failure to register as a sex offender. He is in jail, awaiting trial.]