Red headed step child.

Africa calls to me from memories of joy and simplicity.  How my heart longs for Africa, for the orphans so easy to love, beautiful, and simple.  My heart longs for Africa, for the scenery, the tangible results, the inexpressible joy and peace.  

It's cool to love kids in Africa, it's admirable, and it's easy.  

Someone told me the other day that homelessness is the 'red-headed stepchild' of causes, because it is that thing that irks your soul.  It is very obviously brokenness, but it's easier to blame an individual.  

But, at the same time, it's hard to blame an individual for an entire culture, society, and world's selfishness.  

It's easy to love a baby that's dying of a horrible disease, or a child who has lost her parents to a tragedy.  

It's not as easy to love a grown man that hasn't showered in weeks, has no hope in his eyes, and only knows how to ask for money.  

It is much easier to blame him, and in doing so, to shrug him off.  

I get it, though.  It hit me day two in India: if India's going to change, Indians have to take a stand and start being the change that they wish to see.  

I know what poverty looks like in America, and it has shattered my heart.  

But it's much harder than Africa, than India.  It's much harder, because it's not as cut and dry. 

It's in your neighborhood.  It's people that you choose not to see.  

It's much harder because it requires that we have honest conversations with the people around us, that we take steps to change the community we're a part of.  

It's easy to support service for brokenness that's thousands of miles from anything you'll ever have to touch.  It's pretty easy to support service for broken people that will never change your life.  

But, have a conversation with a homeless person and realize that you're not so different - that they're human too - and the world changes.  Your paradigm shifts.  Your life must look different.  

It's messy.  

It's hard.  

It's uncomfortable.

It's truth.  

And, it's Jesus.  

We must have honest conversations that lead us to change...  and that means huge change.  

Change in our lives so that we can see others break free from a broken system that allows for people to be so disconnected from each other that a symptom like homelessness would even exist.  

That is what is necessary.  

If homelessness is going to be addressed long term, if change is going to happen, we must BE the change we wish to see.  

If we're to see homelessness come to an end in America, we must change ourselves, we must take a stand. 

We must embrace honesty and live in community with the people around us, ever aware of their humanity and brokenness, and ever more aware of our own.