New Year's Resolutions
Ok, so maybe that last post was a little weird - but so is the enigma that is my mind. And sometimes I feel an intense urge to splatter bits of my mind upon the canvas that is this blog. But most of the time, lucky for you, I don't.
New Year's Resolutions. You know how it is. It's 11pm. You're sitting around, in the freezing cold, waiting for the damn fireworks to go off, and you get to thinking about the past year, and what you'd like to change next year, and so you cough up a few of the usual things - read your bible more, do more exercise, do any exercise - and then its midnight and you jump up-and-down and head home. By the morning, chances are you've forgotten what your resolutions were. And even if you do remember them, odds are that you'll never act on them.
All the same, this year I do have a New Year's Resolution. I came up with it after I woke up from the aforementioned dream.
My resolution is this: I want to feel people's pain. And I want to actually care.
One thing I noticed this year, which shocked me quite profusely, is how much my world-view has been corrupted by, well, the world. To me, poverty and pain seem to be just numbers on a page, abstract concepts that I pray for (occasionally), and feel compelled to throw money at.
And so when I pass a homeless guy on the street, I either overt my eyes and quicken my pace, or throw them a buck or two; either way making sure that I'm not late for my class, or my train, or myself.
I see the problems, rather than the people. To be honest, I don't have time for the people. To me, they are just annoyance, nuisances, impediments to my well-made plans. And so I start to view them as the world does - drug-addicts and bums, who will probably just waste my money on alcohol anyway.
But who am I to stand on my pedestal and judge them. Jesus says, "give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you"
Matthew 5:42. And even if I didn't trust them with my money, I could always go into the shop they were sitting outside of and buy them some food, if I wanted to.
As I was walking through the Central Station tunnel early this year, I started to wonder how the homeless people see the world. And I realised that to them, I am no different from anyone else in the tunnel. Sure I may be a Christian with a real concern for the world and its lost. I may give heaps of money to charities, and campaign to make poverty history. I may lead Sunday School and preach on summer mission. But to the guy sitting on the floor of the tunnel, I'm just the same as everyone else - head down, hands in the pockets, too busy to stop, too busy to care.
I don't know what it feels like to be an outcast in this world, to be starving and sick, lonely and oppressed. But maybe, this year, it's time I found out. And maybe, this year, it's time I started caring about the people, rather than the problems.