Introduction: This past Sunday after being with our Sunday school class and church and enjoying a meal of Asian food, I was driving south again to return to post for the upcoming work week. Because I-285 West remains a pothole-ridden perimeter of mayhem and death around Atlanta, I decided to drive through the city and take my chances with traffic in one of America’s traffic circles of hell. I have lived in GA much of my life, and I have driven ATL’s roads and interstates for over four decades. But just when you think, “The traffic cannot get any worse,” well, God laughs in your face. But my focus here is not on ATL’s traffic, but on what grieved me as I rounded what we call Grady Curve.

As you pass GA Tech and the Varsity from the north and enter midtown and then downtown, the overpasses near the GA capitol provide some cover from the elements. Under the bridges, what I saw reminded me of concerts I attended in my youth. There were rows and rows of tents and shelters erected on the grassy inclines underneath the bridges. Homeless people squatted all along the I-75/85 highways running through the heart of the city, just feet away from the interstate. Plastic bottles filled with colored liquid and soiled paper littered the area, like a scene from Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. Silver shopping carts (buggies) stuffed with sleeping bags, coats, and plastic bags dotted the worn clay and grass hillside. Men and women squatted on their haunches, reminding me of some of my times abroad on military assignments, and seeing how the Afghans would squat in Kabul and Bagram, usually smoking hashish from hookah pipes, gathered around the sprawling hoses like worshipers around a fogging Medusa.

Scripture: Even while driving, you could register drivers’ thoughts as we drove through the city, passing the men and women crouched among their filth on the hillside. Some drivers may’ve scoffed at what they saw, convinced that the homeless wanted to be homeless. No accountability was their idol. And charity was easily available. Others were perhaps less cerebral about the sight and felt that taxpayers should hand more money to organizations ostensibly aimed at mitigating such realities. For me, I was grieved. Why? Because Scripture and history are both clear: “For you always have the poor with you . . .” (Mt 26:11a, ESV). As I drove towards post, signs were replete: “HELP WANTED.” “NOW HIRING.” “APPLY INSIDE/$15 per hour starting wage.”

Personal Experience: When I was a ninth-grade student in high school in the little town where I spent much of my youth, I was in a pep rally during sixth period with the rest of the school’s student body. Suddenly, I was paged to the principal’s office. You can imagine my emotions, I’m sure, if you were ever a normal 15-year-old boy, but as I walked to the principal’s office, I was running through my mind, “What have I done? Why am I being called to the principal’s office? What in the world?”

When I entered the principal’s office, not only was the principal there, but so was the sheriff of our little county. He was also my neighbor, and his sons were some of my buddies growing up. We rode bikes and go-carts and fished together for years and years. Anyway, the sheriff looked at me and said, “Jon, let’s take a ride.” So, I, more terrified than ever, got in the patrol car and he drove us out to my house. When we got there, there were firetrucks and emergency vehicles there, as well as vehicles from the neighborhood. Our home had burned down. A wire had shorted, and an electrical fire had burned the whole thing down, nearly to the foundation. It was a total loss.

We went from being comfortable in everyday life to literally having nothing but what we had on. My family fought with the insurance company. It was the age-old stereotype of the dirty insurance guy apparently not wanting to indemnify the policyholders. It got ugly. Anyway, it was humbling. We struggled for a bit. But we rebuilt. On the same space. We worked at it. We didn’t quit and resign ourselves to homelessness. There was never such a thought. But it was not easy.

Wisdom from the Word: Each time I see a homeless person, or an encampment of homeless people, or I see the girl standing in front of the Walmart near post wearing Nike tennis shoes and texting on her cell phone, but holding a placard with abbreviated grammar that reads, “Help. Need $. Veteran. Thx. God bless,” I grieve. Why?

Because we have always had and will have the poor with us. And the reasons are many. Who knows if there’s any truth to her presentation?

Some people are probably that way because of circumstances beyond their control; some are there due to their own indolence; others are there because they are mentally ill; still others are there because they’re fleeing something even worse. The reasons are manifold.

But when I read passages like, “For there will never cease to be poor in the land. Therefore I command you, “You shall open wide your hand to your brother, to the needy and to the poor, in your land” (Dt 15:11, ESV), at least two things are clear: 1) the poor (and homeless) are nothing new, and 2) we are to be wise as serpents and innocent as doves regarding human nature (Mt 10:16).