The wind harshly blew through a cloudy gray Kansas City sky. Snow was on its way, as a cab passed, an occasional horn honked and the beat of footsteps pounded against a brick sidewalk. The footsteps almost sounded like music if you listened to them long enough, some soft, some hard.
It was there, with his duffle bag beside him, against the patter of feet, where Billy Ray Harris sat, homeless.
As the day went on, a woman, whose face meshed into the crowd of faces, emptied the contents of her change purse. In her hurried effort to help someone less fortunate than herself she mistakenly dropped her diamond engagement ring into Billy’s plastic cup.
Day turned to dawn before Sara Darling realized what she had done. Frantically searching her mind she eventually decided to go talk to Billy, reason with him, offer him a reward, get her ring back. After finding him she leaned down to his eye level, and said, “Do you remember me?”
“Well I don’t know, I see a lot of faces,” he said.
“I might have given you something very valuable,” she said. As she was thinking over the next words she would say, Billy said, “Was it a ring? I have it.”
Within seconds there was her diamond ring sitting his hand, that only moments before, she thought was gone forever. It was something of a miracle to her that this man who could have pawned the ring as a way out of his difficult circumstances chose to keep it and give it back to the rightful owner instead, believing that one act of kindness deserved another.
If that were not enough to warm the heart, and show us the value of God’s tender blessings, the story goes on. Because of Billy’s kindness Sara and her fiancé Bill continued to think about Billy. The reward they gave him of $40 was not enough. They wanted to help Billy get off the street and turn his life around. Within days they had set up an online fundraiser to collect donations for Billy.
Soon, donations started pouring in from all over the world, people, who couldn’t believe the decent heart of a poor man, desperate, living on the street, depending on nickels to eat, would give back a valuable diamond ring to a woman he had never met. He said he was the grandson of a preacher, and that “Thank God he still had some good character left.”
In a harsh world, that some days seems more dangerous than kind, in a world where selfless acts of kindness and trust are often rare and overshadowed by hatred, racism, and self determinism, Billy’s story hit the remaining part of a heart believing good people still exist. God allowed us to see, through Billy, the grandson of a preacher, that God’s good character is everywhere, struggling to be found.
Within weeks of Sara and Bill setting up the account for Billy, donations of $174,000 poured in. Messages as far away as Uganda, and New Zealand poured in. Billy, the grandson of a preacher, could soon pick himself up, dust himself off, and move into his own apartment. He was now more than the homeless man on the street.
As inspiring as this act of kindness, trust and honesty is from one human being to another, it is so much more than that. In one moment Billy went from the man on the street, to a symbol of human struggle, strength, poverty and homelessness.
Homelessness now had a face. Poverty now had a purpose. All the preconceived notions that many had regarding poverty and homelessness were cracked in a single moment.
God had turned a miraculous page in Billy’s life, and at the same time allowed the world to see the face behind poverty, and the reality that sometimes life just isn’t fair.
Maybe we had never understood that many of today’s homeless lining America’s street corners, parks and sidewalk benches have jobs, but no home, clothes, but no food, a friend’s basement, a lonely street corner, a bench, but no home.
We dismissed those in need as scammers, mentally ill, alcoholics, drug addicts, diseased. Others said they were lazy or thieves, just people who need to get a job. It was easier than admitting the cracks in the system. It was easier than seeing that once you fall in, it gets harder and harder to crawl out.
As I read this incredible story I couldn’t help but see God’s hand in it all. A sister he had lost contact with in the last two decades of his life suddenly had a way to contact him. Sara and her fiancé Bill, who through one act of friendship, understood God’s power through love and kindness. Billy, was no longer homeless or destitute. God had shown him that his life was much more valuable than brilliant diamonds.
Jesus, over and over showed compassion and importance to people rejected and looked down upon. Jesus never left people in the condition they were in. He found a solution. He drove out evil spirits, healed lepers, paralytics, fed the hungry, healed adulterers, idolaters and sinners. All people society would have considered outcasts.
Lepers were considered unclean and disgusting. They were rejected by family, friends, and community. They were people in need of physical and spiritual healing. No one could touch them. If they did they were considered unclean also. It was a progressive disease. There was no cure.
When the leper in Mark 1 went to Jesus and begged at his feet to be healed, there was a good reason. This man was an outcast, without friend, family or community. Unaccepted, outcast, sneered at, looked down upon, probably depressed, hopeless, poor, and down-trodden. Jesus was this man’s only hope. He was asking Jesus for much more than just physical healing. He was asking for his life back, he was asking for a future.
“If you are willing, you can make me clean,” said the man.
“Filled with compassion, Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. ‘I am willing,’ he said. ‘Be clean!’” Mark 1: 40-41
To many, the homeless fall into the same rejection category today. If you don’t believe that, sit in a restaurant sometime and look at the faces of people sitting in the restaurant who are forced to confront the problems of homelessness. Watch them as they busily and irritatingly rush by a man on the street, or let their eyes fall to the ground, jaws locked.
The homeless are often forced to leave restaurants, told they can’t use the bathroom, or otherwise disrespected. They don’t sit in front of restaurants, and some cities have an ordinance they must be so many feet away from eating establishments. Is that because they are considered a nuisance to patrons, or are they like lepers in our society today?
In the face of poverty and homelessness how many times do we see God’s face, and like Jesus are filled with compassion, and try to find a godly solution, or do we, like the people in biblical times simply want them removed to the city gate?
Billy, a homeless man, had a Godly destiny; a destiny that had not come. Billy was easy for the rest of us to forget; almost invisible, but God saw his face, his life, and his heart. And as God spread out the great mosaic of Billy’s life before him, he didn’t see a homeless man, he saw Billy, the grandson of a preacher, a good man. He saw the struggle in Billy’s life was mixed and meshed with a purpose, an understanding, an awakening. God had a plan.
In Jeremiah we are also reminded how God sees us our lives:
“For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord. Plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.”
And so we too should realize that every life has a purpose, every life a plan, and though often we may think we have the answers, our view is limited and our vision lacking. It’s up to us to embrace God’s great design for ourselves and others by striving to emulate kindness and love in all that we do.