Downcast
Why, my soul, are you downcast?–Psalm 43:5
A couple were on a bike ride in the city.
“I need to buy a pack of cigarettes,” the man told his wife as he scanned the asphalt jungle within his purview.
The wife shot him a quizzical look. Neither of them smoked and never had.
“Why?”
“You know the red sweatshirt guy that skulks up and down our street, all hunched, always with his head down?”
She was familiar. They’d see him walking far and wide and agreed he seemed sketchy. “I want to get him a pack of cigarettes,” he said.
Silence.
“He needs them.”
Her confusion morphed into judgment. Her thoughts went to arsenic, lead, and nicotine. She clutched her pearls, “Why would you give him something that would harm him?
Her husband routinely used the front porch of their turn-of-the-century Craftsman as his outdoor office, doing computer work and taking business calls. Their home is three doors down from one of the city’s many restaurant rows, and their porch is an excellent spot for people-watching. The red sweatshirt man passes by their home often multiple times a day—in fact, their entire family had noticed and been curious about him. They’d observed him all around their neighborhood, all times of day, his eyes averted, pacing. He seemed deliberate—a wanderer on a mission.
She remembered once when her husband wondered aloud if he was watching their own house, “casing the joint.”
From his physical appearance, she’d suspected he was one of many people dealing with homelessness. But sometime later, she had noticed him sitting on a porch just a few doors down from theirs (in the opposite direction of “restaurant row”), which made her even more mystified.
The man explained the reason for the cigarettes to his wife. He told her that a few days ago, as the red sweatshirt walker passed by their front porch, this time, he struck up a conversation. Her husband raised his voice over the knee-high wall, “Wow, you must put in a lot of miles every day.”
He looked up, making eye contact with the man calling down from his porch. “Yeah, I’m probably wearing these shoes out.”
He’s “Kenneth” now, no longer known solely as the “red sweatshirt guy.” Kenneth explained that he walks around town looking for cigarette butts. He collects the discarded (cast-down) butts, removes the remaining tobacco and combines it with cigarette paper, and rolls his own. He can’t afford to buy cigarettes because his disability check barely covers the cost of his prescription meds. In Kenneth’s transparency, he offered his weakness—volunteered his mental health diagnosis—one that causes paranoia, hearing voices, and seeing dark, terrifying creatures. Kenneth said that the meds do help, but he admits that he also relies on a couple of other substances—and his DIY hand-rolled cigarettes—to help calm him and get his “head straight.” Kenneth’s aunt allows him to stay in her rental a few doors down.
The husband told Kenneth that he knew people who struggled with the same disorder and imagined what a difficult journey it would be. He said it’s good that he’s getting exercise and has meds that help, but advised him to be careful, pointing out that the other “supplements” were probably not good for him. “You know, those things can take you out, too, Kenneth,” he said.
Kenneth knew.
Hearing her husband’s explanation, her judgment dissolved, and her heart broke. She understood the pack of cigarettes: Her tender-hearted husband was meeting Kenneth right where he was, making a priceless human connection. He was seeing him, seeing a higher, bigger—maybe an eternal—picture.
Her mind immediately went to a two-part message on Philemon she’d heard recently at church. Historically, that story of the runaway slave, Onesimus, never really sat well with her. The mention of slavery in the Bible was one of those off-putting, disorienting, sticky bits in scripture she’d tried and failed to reconcile. Why didn’t God, through Paul in this instance, simply right that wrong and abolish slavery? Instead, Paul implored Philemon, the slave owner, to take Onesimus back after he’d “wronged” him and run away. Was Paul (and God) complicit? Did God turn a blind eye to slavery?
Recalling the two-part Philemon sermon–the one that helped her to see Philemon in an entirely different light, the woman drew a parallel to this odd conversation about cigarettes.
Thinking back to Pastor Tyler’s summary, God showed us how the world could work. Paul did not stop short of abolition, he went beyond it. He called for more. He called for so much more than abolition calls for.”
“…He is seeing Earth from the vantage point of Heaven, and he’s asking Philemon and all of us to live in concert with that world right here and right now in the complex relationships and less-than-ideal circumstances that we are uniquely presented with today. This prayer is an invitation to LOOK UP.”
Some days later, the man reported to the wife that the next time Kenneth passed the man’s “office,” the man surprised Kenneth with the cigarettes:
Kenneth’s face lit up, “Oh! You got me a whole pack!”
“I just kept thinking of you scrounging for butts…but you know, Kenneth, this stuff isn’t good for you, either.”
He knew.
Kenneth expressed how much this gift meant to him. It mattered. As he returned in the direction of his aunt’s house, Kenneth broke open the pack of cigarettes. The man watched as he hoped that Kenneth would attempt a new way, maybe try out a new “path.”
Since then, now every time Kenneth passes by the man’s front porch office, Kenneth lifts his eyes to his neighbor—his new friend who saw him and met him exactly where he is—in his gritty, less-than-ideal, unique circumstances and loved him.
Click here to watch Part One of “What is Paul Doing?
Click here to watch Part Two of “Philemon: A Heavenly Life in a Fallen World”
- “It is the “useless” who matter the most because if they are persons—if they are seen, known, welcomed, and given places of honor in our households—then all of us are set free from our uselessness. If those who cannot earn money, and perhaps not even able to spend it, are of the greatest value, then we too, can be free from serving it. If those whom the world has forgotten and written off are the ones we know and remember, then we can trust that we ourselves will be remembered long after our usefulness is gone. If we can recognize those who cannot even see us—if we can see them as persons—then we ourselves, so often unsure of whether someone truly sees and knows us, can know that from the beginning to the end of our days, we will also be seen.” –Andy Crouch
- “If we had no other first-century evidence for the movement that became Christianity, this letter ought to make us think: Something is going on here, something is different. People don’t say this sort of thing. That isn’t how the world works. A new way of life is being attempted—by no means entirely discontinuous with what was there already, but look at things in a new way, trying out a new path.” –NT Wright
Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God. –Psalm 43:5