Officers Lunch Date (A Routine Drive By)
Ma’am, Are You Hungry?
An officer is one who is instructed to move, ticket, and even arrest any homeless people they encounter. This officer flipped the script, he bought food and ate with a homeless lady, wow! Can we learn a lesson here?
Introduction
This brief and to the point article introduces the source of the answer to all homelessness issues, God. The officer mentions Him in his commentary. Misconceptions are the trap that deals most homeless a blow that they rarely recover from. Officers are assigned by their position to enforcement laws, and the homeless are, by their position, rendered subject to that enforcement, but are they? Would you have a conversation with a homeless person?
Let’s look at His word as we start today
Acts 20: 35
In everything I did I showed you by this kind of hard work we must help the weak, remembering the words the Lord Lord Jesus Himself said, “It is more blessed to give then to receive.”
2 Corinthians 9: 8
And as God is able to bless you abundantly, so that in all things at all times, you will abound in every good work, As is it written, “They have freely scattered their gifts to the poor, their righteousness endures forever.”
What say you…
Join me would you please, I have food for us both, I want to sit down and talk and have a meal, right here, right on the grassy side of the road, would you be willing to follow his example
Tickets, fines, and even jail looms large, why, I dared to sit down for a bite of food, but then things changed, an officer joined instead of ticketing me, could there be hope for long-term change
Do We Have the Ability to be Counterintuitive?
“The fastest way to become a nobody!” Negative reactions from the public because of River’s line of work. More in common than one would care or dare to admit, except maybe over pizza. Opposites sitting down to break bread and talk is a novel idea and one that should happen more often. Doing the opposite of what is expected, normal or thought needs to be done by society, do we still carry that ability within us as humans?
Counterintuitive, police offering food, not tickets. Counterintuitive for a Police Officer is an officer buying food and eating with a homeless person, not chasing them off. Counterintuitive, a homeless person freely sitting down with an officer and not being in fear. Counterintuitive no one called the police on her, he drove by and stopped, to help. Who thinks that maybe in the realm of working with and attempting to help we may need a little more continuativeness?
Are we Able to See the Person as Human?
This is a touchy, sensitive, often dodged question in the homeless community and the homeless Industrial Complex, it makes people nervous. If human then there is a deeper, instinctive moral obligation to help. If not human, then it is easier to throw them to the side and move on. Now here goes a statement that may anger some people. We will spend and cry and fuss over millions of puppies and kittens with no eternal soul, but a homeless human, with an eternal, we avoid at all costs. What is up with this situation?
When you read articles, clippings, studies, and reports on the escalating homelessness problem one distinct term missing is the term, ‘human.’ They are simply mentally ill, addicted, displaced, down on their luck, criminals, bums, eye sores, and the list goes on. But if we label them and refuse to humanity, it is easier to ignore their needs and to have no compassion.
Phone Call or Food, Decision Time
Somewhere the nation got turned around, got turned sideways, and their moral compass got knocked off true north. 100 years ago, not 50 years ago, homelessness existed, but it was not accepted as normal and as nothing that could not be fixed. People have struggled and always will, but they were not abandoned and forgotten, to suffer and die alone on the streets. In other words, calling the authorities was not even thought about, it was calling granny, calling auntie, calling the church elders, finding help now.
But to think like that, to go to the church, to family, to the community is completely counterintuitive to how we have been trained. We have been trained to depend on the government as a nanny state for way too long and too much.
This officer broke with protocol and policy and allowed his humanity to win the day and went back to the old days of policing. He made a decision to be compassionate, even though he could not solve the problem or get her off the streets, he gave her something invaluable, hope. To sit down with the homeless is unheard of, to buy food even more, his decision was compassion, counterintuitive.
What is Their Back Story
Her back story was simply brokenness. The daughter is dealing with cancer and is in foster care. Another daughter is not with her at the present time. The husband is also homeless and living on the streets in another area. Hope is not something that she is familiar with and yet this officer showed her living and breathing hope.
This is what is missed in the majority of homeless intervention programs, what is the whole picture, what is going on with your entire life picture. She said that we are more than our current circumstances, but until that is embraced in the interventions, the problems cannot be solved. It is looking at a broken toe and not seeing the giant sore on the big toe and only treating the broken toe. The broken tow won’t kill you, but the sore just might, think. What is the back story?
ShininToday’s Economy, it is Very Slipperyg Light on Homeless Fears
The dangerous assumption all too many are making when they spot a homeless human anywhere is this, ‘That will never be me,’ dangerous in today’s economy. The very makeup and landscape of homelessness has changed and is changing beyond belief since the pandemic. The related inflation, rental, and mortgage changes have driven untold hundreds of formerly stable humans to the streets, and they may never recover and get back to a home again. Palm Beach County FL just published an article of working firefighters and teachers who have leases and homes and are on the verge of homelessness, in the fall of 2025.
The breakdown of the core family unit, the loss of family structure, and the instilling of false family structures have allowed homelessness to take hold at a higher level. Without family, nobody is fully safe or secure from the bumps of life and one of them may be homeless in the near future unless this economy is turned around. The makeup of the number on the streets has changed, and the slope is only getting more slippery.
Conclusion
This by far is one of the shortest articles brought before you since starting this blog, however, is it is by far also the most profound. Why do I say this, because it is a decision provoking blog that you have to face nearly every day that you are out of your house? You are seeing more and more homeless, struggling, hurting, down and out humans, what to do? Your actions and voice are powerful, and can bless or harm, what will you do?
This officer has a sworn duty to uphold the mandates of his given city’s legal codes, but he made a decision that another ticket or citation was not the answer for this day, instead, he sat down and had a conversation. He identified what is often lost in all the fighting and fussing over the homeless issues, humanity.
Lunch, food, and water are not basic human needs. If so then what are they being legally banned for the homeless? Why are they being sent to jail for asking for help to survive? The homeless of today are not the homeless of yesterday, no matter what your mindset tries to tell you, follow this officer’s footstep, please.
CTA…
Answer this,
Why am I taking so much time writing about a short article about a police officer and a homeless woman having lunch? Compassion, kindness, mercy, counterintuitive thinking, being concerned for someone other than yourself. What would you have done?
In today’s legal action actions against the homeless just trying to survive day to day, what you have been your action if you had been the one to drive by this lady and her sign?
Do we as humans still possess the ability to think and behave counterintuitively or has that been driven out of us by the mass thinking training of follow the rules or else mindsets?
Final Words:
Your Options when Meeting or Passing a Homeless Person:
Ignore them as the majority do and believe that they have done some great wrong and this is their fault
Yell at them and tell them to go get a job, as many do without realizing that it is very hard to get a job with clothes, shoes, sleep and food
Throw stuff at them and belittle as many have done and continue to do and make them feel really bad which is what drive the suicide rate so high, especially around December
The real big, tough guy approach is this on, call the police and really make their life hard, because they will probably end up in jail and loss what little they have been holding onto to survive
Or here is the totally counterintuitive one, get them a bite of food and some water, show some humanity! That is what God expects of all of us.
