When we think of a table laid for a feast, we think of wonderful things.There are many tables in this life, and often they are laid with atrocities instead of wonderful things.These atrocities are truths that are inconvenient for us to fathom.
The conversation begins: “If I’m in your way, just knock me down. I don’t mind. It was all very simple. Our father used his belt; our mother, her hairbrush. They may not of got me on the outside yet, but they sure got me on the inside – brokenhearted,furious, empty, embarrassed – you can write that in your book too – disgusted, hopeless, violated.” As he told me this, he ate candy, crinkling up the paper and throwing it on the ground, next to the cigarette butts there. “I used to take house paint and paint my shoes. Someday, somebody is going to need me.”
I try to bring God into our conversations. “God is love” gets us lots of places. “Where is God?,” he asks. “My momma took my clothes and threw them in the graveyard and sprinkled dirt over them. Today I have these prickly places all over my skin. Wakes me up at night – prickling. Don’t seem to me God has ever been there for me. My uncle told me I was a one-night stand. I wasn’t welcome.”
This table was laid for this man, and it is an inconvenient truth that many live this way. I notice that many people here have been hit by cars; it’s another reality for the homeless. “Everything I try on this earth fail me.” This too is an inconvenient truth.
There are, however, potentials to turn a life around: a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, the smallest act of caring. Perhaps this is love.