Life Angles: LIFE Acronym #12 - Lifting Impoverished Folks Easily

LIFE Acronym #12:
"Lifting Impoverished Folks Easily"

Today I decided to post a little story that I wrote down 4 years ago. It's never been published, and I've never shown it to anyone. I have not changed it at all; I just copied and pasted it from a document on my flash drive. I was tempted to change the wording on parts of it, but I ultimately decided that it would be interesting to show you what my writing style was like 4 years ago. This story still gets to me, but from it I've learned to listen to God when He directs me to do something. Here is the story, unedited, unadulterated, and in its original form:



"3-18-07
How Much Is Fifty Bucks Really Worth?

In my early twenties, due to my weaknesses I had spent some time now and then being almost completely broke. I was earning only about 5 to 10 thousand dollars per year. That’s about $400 to $800 per month on average.

In the desert near my house lived a homeless man. He was a nice man named Richard, who was about fifty or sixty years old. Interestingly, he actually had an engineering degree but ended up homeless for one or more reasons unbeknownst to me.

Every once in a while I would see him walking down the road with his pack of things. I would usually stop and say hi and maybe give him a few dollars or some food if I had some with me.

I remember one specific time in 2006 when I saw him. I was driving down the road and there he was up ahead about a half mile. I had a fifty dollar bill with me, and at that moment I was stricken with a strong desire to give him the fifty dollars. Fifty dollars didn’t come around so often for me at the time, so I ended up fighting a battle in my mind as I got closer to him. I was really drawn to give him the fifty dollars. I knew how far it would go for him. Who knew if anyone had EVER given him that much money at one time?

The problem was that it was a collectible fifty dollar bill that I had recently found in circulation. Even so, I was sorely tempted to give it to him. I can’t remember ever being so strongly moved to give something to a homeless person.

But, shamefully, this battle would go down in heavenly history as one that I had lost. I didn’t give him the fifty dollars. I just waved at him as I drove by, and he smiled at me and waved back. Darn that collectible $50 bill.

I’m certain that he really needed the fifty dollars at that moment, and that it would have meant the world to him. But I failed him. I failed him; one of God’s children, and my brother here on Earth, and I’m ashamed of it.

Disgracefully, later on I ended up spending that very same collectible fifty dollar bill to pay a cell phone bill when I was in a bind. Who do you think deserved that fifty dollar bill more, Richard the nice homeless man, or the cell phone company? Who do you think that simple little $50 bill would have made more difference for?

A couple months later, he died. Richard, my homeless neighbor, the nice man with the engineering degree, died. I’m sure that he had family somewhere. I’m sure he had happy times in his past. In his past, he had a normal life just like all of us, with concerns, wishes, dreams, and fears. He was every bit as human as anyone else. But he lived out his last years as a vagabond; an outcast, wandering the streets, sleeping on the desert floor, and begging for every morsel of food that he ate.

When I heard the news that he had been found dead in a nearby wash, regret and shame pulsed through my veins. Pangs of intense remorse tore at my soul for having selfishly kept that $50 to myself two or so months before. I have never regretted more having kept something for myself when it was meant for another of God’s children.

Couldn’t poor Richard have been the recipient of just one more act of love before he left this earthly sojourn? It was within my power to be that earthly angel for him. God’s Spirit worked on me to make me act. But I did not. It still makes me want to cry to think of my failure. How much is fifty bucks really worth?"