I need you to see something:

Do you see it? How about here:

Do you see now? How about here:

It looks like hope, doesn’t it? It looks a lot like hospitality, welcoming and embracing the stranger with the welcoming embrace of Christ. If you look hard enough you can see friendship, even love, as God’s people followed Jesus into their suffering and joined them there. Now together they’re following Him to wholeness; to peace.

The houses they live in, the new relationships they’re forming, the hope they’re feeling, the healing they’re experiencing, all are tangible signs of the the reign of God breaking into their lives. And it’s beautiful to witness, isn’t it?

But they aren’t the only ones being changed. Look here:

And here:

Please know this isn’t simply about 3e Restoration.

It’s about gracious hospitality. It’s about God’s people extending His welcome to others living in the margins underneath bridges, in tents, or crammed in 13′ x 25′ hotel rooms with six children, and bearing witness to the presence of the risen Christ among us. 

You could say it’s about remembering that if God has proven anything in the person of Jesus it’s that no one should be abandoned, even if it’s of their own making. Because while we were still sinners God refused to abandoned us. 

People living in homelessness or poverty aren’t “problems” to be solved or projects to be “fixed;” they are people to be joined with. May we refuse to abandon them and choose to see them, and extend the same welcoming embrace we receive from God in Christ.

They aren’t lost on Him. Don’t let them be lost on us.