The man on the side of the Road

so i met this guy today.
His name was Jake Chiefcalf.
he is native american.
he is funny.
he has the most amazing toothless smile.
he spends his days drinking away the pain of life.
he is asking questions.
he works doing construction.
he has four kids.
he taught me something today.

so the story goes that Marlee and i were walking downtown today, just kinda shopping around, casually looking, mainly just walking and talking. we were walking past this one club and we see Jake stumble out and sit down against the wall. We looked at him and offered him the smallest hello, seeing the sadness in his eyes. He responded and asked us to come talk with him for a moment and that he needed advice. Needlesss to say we talked, we listened, and we got to know this amazing man on the side of the road.
He told us about his wife, his kids, his job, and his struggles. We told him we couldn't give him much advice about his family dynamics since we had no experience but if he was hungry we would love to take him to get some food. So we headed to the mall and on the way there were tears falling from his face......he couldn't believe that someone would buy him a meal, no one had ever done that before. He prayed for us in blackfoot and we continued on. The meal consisted of tacotime.
great choice.
he asked us why we would not only buy him food, but take time out of our day to sit and talk and listen to him.
we told him about Jesus.
we talked about dealing with tragedy and about the cruel and hard things that happen in this world. we talked about the good things, and tried to focus on them.
Coming to a close we prayed for him, his family and his life.
There are some things we can't plan and some things that we would never plan, but God has a plan in everything.
Talking to Marlee tonight about our night and about this divine appointment we realize Jake taught us a lot. We realized that even though he was drunk, even though he may never remember what we talked about, or even us, that we would never forget him. That we will never forget Christs love for him to the point that he would use two small people like ourselves to show this man a glimpse of it.

funny thing is....earlier today i was telling marlee about getting involved in a homeless ministry, that Jesus had been tugging at my heart and revealing to me his love for the unloved.

I guess Jesus was listening.