Thirty-Nine
____________
Life on the Streets
“Hey,” Renaldo Reyes smiled as his fiancé entered
his modest little apartment’s kitchen, “I didn’t hear you come in.”
Sticking her finger into the
middle of his back, while he dried the last recently washed plate, Jenny
replied, “I could have been a dangerous criminal, or worse.”
“Then I would have another
opportunity to share the great news of our Savior’s sacrifice again and
possibly—”
“Ok, ok,” Jenny laughed.
“Where’s your brother?”
“Hernando’s at our mother’s
tonight. We are free to minister until daybreak if the Lord grants us the
opportunity.”
The apartment that Renaldo lived
in was on the second floor of one of four units located on the outskirts of an
area simply known as ‘The Projects’. He did not own much, most of the
furnishings came from friends’ gifts and local thrift stores. His clothes were
second hand and he purchased food in bulk from a local Farmers’ Market as often
as possible. The old brown sofa in his living room had a small tear in one of the
cushions, but a little duct tape and a flip over hid the eyesore from the view
of visitors. But Renaldo Reyes remained happy; he knew he was exactly where God
wanted him to be.
Jenny lived a few blocks away in
the renovated attic of an elderly woman named Mrs. Tilly.
“Mrs. Tilly is so nice,” Jenny
commented, “she always helps me with things like the wash and never will take
any money or food for her efforts.”
Placing another plate away in
the kitchen cabinet over the sink, Renaldo replied, “Yes, she has said many
times that this is her way of serving God.”
The sixty-seven year old saint
of a woman was rarely able to leave her home. She suffered from excessive
migraine headaches, knee problems, and other assorted physical ailments, but
she always had a smile on her face. Mrs. Tilly was always more than willing to
help Renaldo and Jenny in any way she could. Jenny helped with cleaning,
washing, shopping, and other household tasks in lieu of rent.
“Oh,” Renaldo remembered, “How
did that interview with the reporter go? Poppy… something?”
“Poppy Fields. The interview
went great! We had a good conversation and covered a lot of topics related to
our ministry, how we met, stuff like that. The interview almost ended pretty
quickly once the gunfire started up.”
Looking concerned, but not
shocked, Renaldo asked, “Anybody hurt… shot?”
“Nobody we saw. Gun shots are
sort of routine in that part of the city.”
“Sort of like background music
in a shopping center’s elevator.”
The two laughed softly.
Jenny straightened her hair
while continuing, “After that excitement, the journalist and I stopped in at a
coffee shop to continue our discussion.”
“Good topics?”
“Always.” Jenny smiled, “You
know, she’s actually been visiting different churches around the San Francisco
Bay Area and is really enjoying that. She may come with us one evening to
observe our ministry and maybe even help us.”
Renaldo looked pleased.
Jenny inquired, “Tonight’s
horizon of outreach?”
“Graffiti Alley?”
Jenny remembered, “As planned,
of course, I think the area is ripe for harvest. How about you?”
“Couldn’t agree more.”
Graffiti Alley, as it was
commonly called, was located in the heart of the worst area of the city for
drug dealers, transients, prostitutes, and other assorted cultural outcasts of
the western world. A dangerous place with a reputation to match, it was the
kind of place most people feared to frequent. Most of the graffiti in the area
was not artistic in nature. Instead, the markings reflected the emptiness and
hatred for life that those who dwelt there all shared. Police patrolled the
area infrequently and criminals took advantage of the budgetary tough times law
enforcement departments were facing. Crime was on the rise.
“Off to Satan’s turf with an
invasion of Light!” shouted Renaldo. “Removing the stench of sin and replacing
it with the aroma of God’s sacrificial love.”
Jenny smiled at her fiancé’s
enthusiasm and replied, “Light dispels darkness, so let’s get to shinin’!”
Jenny and Renaldo maintained a
large map of the areas in the city they planned to evangelize, systematically
marking the regions they visited. On occasion the couple returned to the alleys
and back-streets where larger groups of homeless, addicts and other people who
suffered from the atrocities of their culture’s moral, spiritual, and economic
meltdown, frequented. Follow-up was an important factor for their ministry.
Whenever possible another team associated with Cyrene Ministries conducted
follow-up and food handouts in the areas covered by Jenny and Renaldo.
Before the two left the
apartment, Renaldo read to Jenny a portion of a book he was enjoying, “We
mature to a level as we grow where we choose moral reason over animal instinct.
There comes a time in life where an individual chooses to resist and ignore
temptations rather than give into them, whatever they may be. Our modern
western social cultures mandate that this choice does not exist—”
“Sounds very philosophical,”
Jenny noted.
Renaldo read one line slowly,
“The Blood of Christ deals with sin, but the Cross deals with the sinner.”
Jenny scampered out the door
quickly once Renaldo finished is brief literary discourse.
“Hey, wait up, Jenny!”
“C’mon, we’ll be late.”
Jenny preferred the practical
and applicable side of theology rather than the sociological and culturally significant
aspects related to it. She was more of a hands-on, how-to, one-on-one counselor
type of person. Renaldo was of a very analytical and philosophical sort. They
made the perfect pair in ministry.
Renaldo locked the door upon
exiting while shouting, “Late for what?”
“Life on the streets,” the faint
sound of Jenny’s growingly distant voice stated, “and I mean real ‘life’.”
Renaldo smiled as he ran to
catch up with Jenny, he knew that reaching the lost and bound souls, those they
treasured so dearly, was the only real and new life some of those individuals
would ever have the opportunity to obtain and live.
During Jenny and Renaldo’s
evening of ministry, they ran into a fellow known as T.J. T.J. had spent most
of his life on the streets. When he was eight years old his mother dropped him
off in the heart of Graffiti Alley and told him she’d be right back, and that
was eighteen years prior. T.J. looked twenty years older than his twenty-six
years; life on the hard streets had taken its toll, ‘worn the sole away from my
shoe of existence’ as he often mumbled to anyone with a listening ear.
“I was just a wonderin’,” T.J.
questioned Renaldo, “Just a wonderin’ if you folks will be ‘round when,” T.J.
paused for a moment before continuing, “wonderin’ if you’ll be ‘round the day I
die?”
Renaldo thought prayerfully
before answering, “I’m not going to give you one of those candy-coated answers
just to do it, T.J., but I am going to say that God will be with you even if we
are not here at the time. You have a great chance though—”
“What?” T.J. interrupted.
“Turn your life over to God by
just telling him that is what you want to do. Jesus died and stood up alive
from the grave again for you, T.J., and he loves you. God is really the only
one who can love you all of the time for all eternity.”
Jenny added, “People can love
you while they are alive and while you are alive, but memories can fade away
slowly over time once someone is gone. They become shadows of the past that
still stir up emotions, but there can be no physical contact or conversation
with those who have passed away. The good news is the God is always there,
whether you are dead or alive.”
“In the Bible book of Mark,
during his earthy life and ministry, Jesus instructed the religious leaders
with detail, ‘But concerning the dead, that they rise, have you not read in the
book of Moses, in the burning bush passage, how God spoke to him, saying, ‘I am
the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not the God
of the dead, but the God of the living’”, Renaldo put his hand on T.J.’s
shoulder to comfort him, “and Paul instructs us in the book of Romans, ‘For to
this end Christ died and rose and lived again, that He might be Lord of both
the dead and the living.' Christ's resurrection guarantees you eternal life if
you will just accept it; it is a free gift to you at a great cost to God.”
T.J. scratched his head then ran
his fingers through his long, greasy looking hair before he responded, “I
remember… I think I remember.”
Jenny asked, “What do you
remember, T.J.?”
“That Alley Preacher guy, he
preached on that one time, well, sort of. He said that those who believed in
the promise of a coming Messiah, back in the days before Jesus was born, were
alive because of their faith in God’s promise and in God himself. It gets a
little hard for me sometimes to get it all, you know, to understand. I think I
do a little better now, do understand better, that is.”
Both Jenny and Renaldo felt a
surge of joy swell up inside them. It was that feeling that, just like planting
seeds and watering them, something may be sprouting to life in this man’s soul.
“I gotta go now,” T.J. said. “I
gotta go and think about all of this, thanks.”
As T.J. scampered away, Jenny
commented, “Plant, sow and water,” she grasped Renaldo's hand firmly, “and pray
that God's word will fall upon good soil.”
Renaldo contemplatively
remarked, “For some of these transient folks out here this type of social
outcast prison liberates them from the burdens and responsibilities of real
human freedom.” A tear streamed down his cheek, “And Christ offers them freedom
far beyond the capabilities human freedom has to offer... eternal freedom and
more!”
The alley darkened as the night crept in. Jenny and
Renaldo returned to their homes after a few hours, home to pray for those they
met that evening.
Next Chapter: Twists and Turns
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