On some days, I get a call or an email that someone’s lights are shut off or a landlord has posted an eviction. First I pray, because the funds are always tight, then I tell the group members engaged in this battle with me; we pray and then venture out, like God smugglers making an HIV patient’s load a little lighter.
Here’s how it went one day. I had a certain amount of funds in the Secret Angels account. It was going to take most of it to help keep a mom’s electricity on. She came home from a battered women’s shelter to find the lights off and that the bill had not been paid for quite some time.
I remembered our early days as a couple. We were no where near ready for marriage. We spent most of the time money juggling and working to keep body and soul together. So when I heard this woman’s story, I empathized. What I’ve learned about intentional faith is that there are stages of response. People who hear this woman’s story will often sympathize. Those suffering similar domestic predicaments will empathize. But engaging faith intentionally is when we enter the realm of “becoming Jesus”, a phrase that has become a popular platitude among our rank-and-file.
Becoming Jesus is hearing and then doing. God hears the voices all day long—“Please, do you hear me?” “Can you send me some relief?” “Am I trapped forever in this life?” When we tune our ear to our community and ask God to turn up His volume so we can hear what he hears, then we can become doers, smuggling God’s love into our community in a manner that surpasses politics and programs.
http://www.secretangelsproject.com
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