What Difference Do It Make?

I recently read a book called Same Kind of Different as Me by Ron Hall & Denver Moore. After I posted some thoughts from it here, my friend Robin told me that the follow-up book, What Difference Do It Make?, is also good, so I ordered it immediately. I am reading it now, and I like it very much. I just wanted to share an excerpt from it here.

“I remember one day in particular when Denver and I went out on the streets surrounding the mission. I had maybe a couple of hundred bucks in cash, and I’d visit with people, ask how they were doing, and bless them with a few dollars.

It’s important to draw a distinction between “blessing” the homeless and “helping” the homeless. I used to think I was helping by serving a meal or giving them some clothes, but I found out that for the most part I was just helping myself, making myself feel warm and fuzzy and philanthropic.

To be sure, it is a BLESSING to the homeless when they see people who care. But to really help, you’ve got to get down in the pit with people and stay with them until they find the strength to get on your shoulders and climb out. Helping someone is when you find out how to help them move toward wholeness and then hang with them until they make a change.

So when Denver and I walked the streets of Fort Worth, it was with the specific intent of bringing blessing. Of stopping to talk to people who are used to folks crossing streets to AVOID talking to them. Of being a bright smile, a touch of humanity.

It was a crisp, autumn afternoon, and we were heading back toward the mission. I had already made like Santa Claus and passed out almost all the money I had. All I had left was a twenty-dollar bill. Well, we turned a corner and came upon a Hispanic man who looked drunk enough to fry ice cream with his breath. Probably in his fifties, he looked seventy, with gnarled hands and brown skin wrinkled like a crushed grocery sack. Wearing smudged jeans and a threadbare flannel shirt of red lumberjack plaid, he lounged so hard against the brick wall of a streetside warehouse that I couldn’t tell whether he was trying to hold himself up or keep the wall from falling down.

Still pretty new to the streets, I pasted on a smile and, with Denver at my shoulder, said to the Hispanic man, “What can I do for you today?”

As the man tried to focus his eyes on me, a thin strand of drool slid from the corner of his mouth and began traveling south. “I needsh a reedle moony,” he slurred in a heavy Spanish accent.

I didn’t quite catch what he said and asked him to repeat himself.

“He say he needs a little money,” Denver said over my shoulder.

I AM NOT GIVING A DRUNK A TWENTY-DOLLAR BILL, I thought as I watched the drool reach the Hispanic man’s chin. Smiling away, I dug into my pants, feeling for smaller change.

Finding none, I pulled out the twenty-dollar bill and surreptitiously showed it to Denver. Glancing back at my mentor in the ‘hood, I tried intently to telegraph a message with my eyes: IF I GIVE HIM MY LAST TWENTY, ALL HE’S GOING TO DO IS GO DOWN TO THE LIQUOR STORE AND BUY SOME BOOZE!

Suddenly Denver leaned in, and I felt his breath at my ear. “Don’t judge the man,” he said, low and quiet. “Just give him the twenty dollars.”

Reluctantly, I held out the money, and the man took it. Just at that moment, the southbound drop of drool detached itself from his chin and hurtled toward the sidewalk.

“Shank ew,” he said.

I had never stopped smiling, but now my grin felt as fake as a plugged nickel. I felt like I’d just given a push to a suicide jumper.

Denver and I bid the man good-bye and headed down the street toward the mission. We hadn’t gone thirty yards when Denver stopped. “Turn ‘round here and look at me, Mr. Ron. I wanna tell you somethin.”

I stopped and faced Denver, and in a way that was becoming familiar to me, he pinned me with one eye while squinting the other like Clint Eastwood. “That man you just gave that money to—his name is Jose. And he ain’t drunk. He’s a stroke victim. And he’s one of the hardest workin men I ever knowed.”

Denver went on to tell me that before a stroke got him, Jose had been a bricklayer and a rock mason who worked hard, lived cheap, and sent all his money home to Mexico to support his family.

“He don’t even drink, Mr. Ron,” said Denver. “He depends on people like you to eat.”

Immediately, I thought of Deborah. From the moment we set foot in the mission, she had looked beyond the ragged clothes and the scars and the dirt and the smells. It was as though God had given her X-ray vision to see right past all that to the people underneath.She never asked them, “How did you get in the shape you’re in?” Her thinking was, if you condition your offer of help on how a needy person got that way, you’re probably not going to help very many people. The question Deborah asked was, “What is your need NOW?”

Now Denver completed his verdict and gave me an ultimatum. Keeping me pinned with that eyeball, he said, “You know what you did? You judged a man without knowing his heart. And I’m gon’ tell you somethin. If you gon’ walk these streets with me, you gon’ have to learn how to serve these people without judgin ‘em. Let the judgin be up to God.”

Wow! Did these words ever hit me! I've been doing this all my life, judging whether people are worthy of help. Reminds me of the words I posted on FB from Mother Teresa:
"If you judge people, you have no time to love them."