back from san fran…i miss it already.

December 18th, 2007 § 3 comments

sf skyline

last week i spent a few days in san francisco braving the brutal 60 degree and sunny weather while shooting some footage for our promotional and fundraising videos for the san francisco project. we had a great time walking around the city, riding the muni, and joyriding on the trolley’s while taking in the sites and sounds, talking with people and eating at unique little restaurants.

this city is so beautiful and i can’t wait to get back to it, but opposite of it’s immense beauty is a sad and depressing darkside riddled with homelessness and despair. on two separate occasions i was riddled with sadness with the people we encountered. on the very first night as we were walking back to our hotel a homeless man walked up to my friend travis and asked for $5. he then began to make an offer that was quite obvious he’s made to a lot of people and of which a lot of people have taken him up on. he offered that for $5, travis could punch this man in the face as hard as he wanted 2 times. one in each eye if he so chose. the guys face was already terribly swollen and cut in various places. i stood there in absolute shock and was completely overwhelmed with grief, sorrow and love for this man. i had no idea what to say or how to respond and i stood there silent.

the next night as we were again walking down market street towards our hotel i noticed a young girl who couldn’t have been more than 16 sitting next to the staircase to the BART. she was holding a small cardboard sign that read homeless, hungry, please help. she was wearing nice looking pajama’s and a rather expensive looking coat as she wrapped herself in a mixture of blankets. she was on the verge of tears. i’m guessing that she was a recent runaway that couldn’t have been on the streets for longer than a week or two. my heart sank, yet i still didn’t know what to do.

the dark side of san francisco isn’t the homosexual issue like so many continue to ask me about. rather it is the rampant homeless and impoverished people of the city. walking down the street of chicago at night (depending on which street) you may see in upwards of 10 homeless people. in san francisco at night you can’t see any less than 30 in a given 2 block radius. what should the church’s response be to something that is so dire, so big, so seemingly impossible to tackle? i know there is no way that one church (let alone a brand new church plant) could ever tackle on its own the homeless issue in one city, but there has to be a way to make some sort of a difference right?

these are the questions that will plague me and haunt me every day as we prepare to go and as we journey together with our new christian community…

Related posts:

  1. Bill Maher on Housing Prices
  2. homeless dilemma (revisited)
  3. my love affair with the divine miss winfrey.
  4. I Voted for Bush…Can I Take It back?
  5. an overlooked epidemic.

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