As a county Outreach Navigator for the chronically homeless, there has been plenty of things that have been a bit difficult to see. In the world of constant pain, drugs, mental illness, disabilities, theft, murder, confusion, survival, loneliness, etc.,  it’s easy to assume that those on the streets are at fault to this. Though there is some truth to it, I come across so many individual with real stories of being raised into extreme abuse, abandonment, or some major trauma at such a early age that it seems unfair to set them up with the classic solution of “just get a job”. To be honest, I just see it as a cruel way society separates itself from the “homeless” either out of ignorance or disgust. Though there are some on the streets that have the ability to “help themselves”, there are too many that may never get help unless the proper assistance is applied. By definition they are chronic, simply because they will always be on the streets due to a severe disability. Which is where my job comes into play with the housing first model. Place them into independent housing first, then work on all the other barriers that homelessness is involved with. All too often the housing first model is solely on the fact that if we don’t get them off the streets they will die there. And unfortunately, I have worked with a number of clients that have died due to the conditions on the streets. The problem of homelessness is just too complex to help them all. I can only result in begging God to intervene. Asking, where is God? And why are so many suffering and dying with no family to even care?

Psalm 113:4–8:

⁴ The Lord is high above all nations,

and his glory above the heavens!

 ⁵    Who is like the Lord our God,

who is seated on high,

 ⁶    who looks far down

on the heavens and the earth?

 ⁷    He raises the poor from the dust

and lifts the needy from the ash heap,

 ⁸    to make them sit with princes,

Acts 17:27-28:

²⁷ …Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, ²⁸ for

       “ ‘In him we live and move and have our being’;

           as even some of your own poets have said,

Isaiah 57:14-15:

¹⁴    And it shall be said,

       “Build up, build up, prepare the way,

remove every obstruction from my people’s way.”

¹⁵    For thus says the One who is high and lifted up,

who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy:

       “I dwell in the high and holy place, (transcendent)

and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit,

       to revive the spirit of the lowly,

Hebrews 2:6-9

⁶ It has been testified somewhere,

       “What is man, that you are mindful of him,

or the son of man, that you care for him?

 ⁷    You made him for a little while lower than the angels;

you have crowned him with glory and honor,

 ⁸        putting everything in subjection under his feet.”