Hitchhiker Kid!
So as of now i still dont have my car back and yesterday i was supposed to hang out with Nathan and Sophie Hunsdale but because i couldnt get a ride i didnt get to hang out with them. i tried to get a ride for 4-5 hours straight and couldnt find one.
so today im trying to work early so i can hang out with them today, but once again i couldnt find a ride, so instead of waiting around trying to get a ride all day i grabbed by backpack, put on my sandels and started walking out of my neighborhood to Upper Manattee River Road outside my neighborhood.
and as i walked...i stuck out my thumb....and i HITCHHIKED!!!!!! it was pretty sweet!
like a billion cars passed me before someone finally stopped and offered me a ride. it took so long i started to think that no one would pick me up. but i met a really sweet guy named john that i got a ride with! iit was pretty sweet, but i dont think there arent many like him. earlier today he saw someone else pushing their car on the side of the road and stopped and helped him push it then gave him a ride. then later he saw me and picked me up.
why dont we do that? the road i was walking on is the road that goes right in front of christian retreat and 2 other churches that i know...so as i was sweating out in the heat trying to walk to work...i was thinking, why isnt anyone stopping, im sure some of them were christians, yet NO ONE stopped to help me out?
now i know that there have been a couple times where i have wanted to pick up a hitchhiker but had to be somewhere and didnt have time. i understand that and that there are some who dont think its safe. all the same i couldnt help but feel like a christian should have picked me up.
yet the guy who picked me up....the awesome guy that had helped not only me but also another guy in the same day...he was not a christian at all. yet, he was doing the things that christians should be doing but arent doing. the hands and feet of Christ should be reaching out to those in need, but we are too comfortable in our everyday American lives to help out someone in misfortune.
U here health and wealth preachers talking about how God wants us to have financial success and that the reason we dont is because we dont have enough faith or we dont pray for it enough or we have sin in our life preventing us from God's financial blessing. well i couldnt disagree more.
in fact i believe that the American church today is suffering from the sickness of wealth. we cant understand what its like to have nothing, or to really be in need and we are comfortable so we dont want to help those in need. out money is a poison that is slowly killing the church. the guy that helped me was telling me how he had to walk the same road i was several times and that no one picked him up, and so he understood my need and thats why he was so willing to help me. what needs does the american church understand...what needs do we try to understand? well we understand things like not wanting to drive somewhere cause gas is so high...what about the person who cant even afford a car at all? we understand not being able to afford a new house and being stuck in an old, not so good, one...but do we understand or try to understand what its like to not have a home at all?
now im guiltly of living my comfortable american life just as much as the next man, but what im trying to say is that we should OPEN our eyes to the world around us. OPEN our eyes to the needs of both the mighty and the lowly. this world is struggling in ways we can never fully comprehend, but we should be TRYING to comprehend. i dont know what its like to live as a poor person in africa, or brazil, or china, or new york for that matter, but im trying to keep in mind that there are people suffering and if i ever get the chance im gunna reach out to these people and try to understand them a little more and try to be the hands and feet of Christ.
Today a non-christian inspired me to live like Christ....doenst that sound backwards? shouldnt it be the other way around? we as Christians should be inspiring non-christians to want to be like Christ and to give their lives to Him.
anyway, this has been another 'Lesssons in the Life of a Hitchhiker' (That is going to be the name of my series of jounal entries that i write everytime i hitchhike)