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Seeing the Child of God
By Linda McCracken
Many of us at Haywood have been the victims of stereotyping. There is no one story of why homelessness occurs. The stories are myriad. Lost jobs due to an economic downturn, broken relationships, physical injuries that affect an ability to lead a successful life well known before the injury or illness, mental illness untreated, use of a substance to dull the pain of early neglect or rejection, and even dependence for too long on the hope that an economic problem is temporary can all lead to losing everything material.
There is also no one story of why some live a privileged life. For most, it is luck, where and to whom one was born, absence of injury or illness, and the advantage of support from community or family. Hard work is not necessarily the delineator between those with privilege and those without, as many privileged people choose to believe. I have known many hardworking people who find themselves unhoused because the work they do is compensated inadequately for them to save enough to get back into housing. I have also known privileged people who have gotten their positions because they knew the “right” people or their families knew them, and it had nothing to do with how hard they worked in comparison to their less fortunate brothers and sisters. The point is that the difference between housed and not housed is a place to stay that is safe and clean, not a moral deficit or a moral superiority. We want to believe if we do the “right “ thing we’ll live a privileged life. Maybe . . .
Ironically, many of the privileged that attend Haywood know that material wealth does not add up to abundant life. Companions who have found themselves financially struggling have taught the privileged about our fear, about learning to trust God, not material well-being, about generosity with one another, and about the generosity of God’s economics that is not measured by what we want but what we need. By the same token, the privileged have realized that abundant life is extremely difficult without some base of economic stability.
But at Haywood Street Congregation we strive to overlook all labels be they positive or negative and see the individual as God sees them, His child who He wants to have abundant life.
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