in no particular order:

• towels right out of the dryer
• a manageable in-box
• a kiss in the kitchen
• coffee
• it deserves another spot: coffee
• the dog, asleep on her back
• text messages from my kids
• a good book, followed by another good book
• surprises in the mail
• a comfy sweatshirt

and megaphone wielding reminders of grace

My son attends a university in a busy, sometimes overwhelming urban center. It is an oasis in the midst of skyscrapers, parking garages, and what I would call, in the right company, a collection of unsavory characters.

I took him to campus on a very cold night shortly after we had experienced some wildly freezing temperatures and rare snow. During our little blizzard, I was fairly put out by feeling incarcerated in our comfortable home with a full pantry and central heat. Those freezing nights were forgotten as I drove through town with the car heater roaring, cutting through side streets to shave off time from my trip so I could get back home before a new round of freezing rain hit.

When I made the last left before approaching campus, my headlights illuminated an unexpected scene in a recess along the side of an old stone church. Three men were huddled together, trying to keep each other warm and away from the biting wind that swirled debris at their feet just inches away from the makeshift safety of the walls.

I’ve seen such a scene before — it’s inescapable in a big city such as this one, but I’ve seen it in Miami, and New York. In Anchorage and Paris. It’s always the same — the dim realization that there was a homeless person, and then the quick adjustment to avoid seeing their eyes. You see, to look into their eyes would be to acknowledge their humanity, and if I did that, well, I’d have to do something more, and that would be uncomfortable, donchaknow.  It would be risky, and not in the they-must-be-sociopaths-and-I’m-going-to-get-mugged way.

I would have to see Christ in their need, and I’m a big fat coward and, let’s face it, too self-absorbed to really face up to that. But I have a soul and a conscience and whatever I didn’t do that night and remained undone was perhaps overshadowed by the image that remained.

As the three men huddled together in the recess, I became aware of their disparate sizes — the one in the middle was very tall and younger, and he was flanked by an older man, and a chubby man of indeterminate age…and the one in the middle was trying to spread out a light blue blanket across the three of them, perhaps not so much to keep them warm as to act like a windbreaker.

The whole scene was colorless. It was late at night, the church stone, once probably light gray or even dazzling white was covered in soot and years of exhaust from buses and cars. The men were in dark clothes, made darker still by dirt and grime. But the blanket looked new. Clean. Warm. And its bright cheery blue was out of place in such a gray monochromatic place.

In the few seconds it took to complete the turn and remove the assaulting headlights that exposed their need, I lamented not having the usual blanket that I carry in my car. It was out of character for me to think it with the intent of actually following through. I must have felt real regret, too, because my next thought was the revelation that they would be okay that night. The bright blue of the blanket was as if Mary’s very own mantle would comfort them that night.

It resonated with me in light of two things that I had recently read, the first, The Return of the Prodigal Son by Henri Nouwen, was quite fresh in my mind. So fresh, in fact, that I had only finished it hours before while in the car on the way home from a trip. The other, a blog post by a guest writer at Michael Hyatt’s blog, Intentional Leadership (add him to your regular reading list), called How Do You See People? Read it. Prodigal Son might be more of a time investment (though worth it) but this post really captures, for me, how I see the poor in our society, and I’m not really talking about the three guys on the street.

Everyone we meet has something they are struggling with, praying about, surviving. We would do well to listen.

It’s an important event, this March for Life…thousands of people converging at the Department of Justice to bring attention to a piece of legislation that never should have happened. So many decades later, it’s still a hot button debate argument, and one not likely to move the masses, um, en masse. It’s not the law that has to change, it’s the hearts of people, and when that happens, everything else will change.

I believe the way this happens is one person at a time. One. It’ll get the job done. Because each of us has a story to tell, and if we’d tell it, well, miracles can happen. I know of one. Her story is hers to tell, but I can share my part of it.

I’ve always been plagued by a cloud of doubt in my faith that creeps upon me unexpectedly. Perhaps it’s my academic training to question, maybe it’s some tragic flaw, maybe it’s just what makes me human — the point is, I know the right things to say, but the conviction? Maybe it’s there. Maybe it’s not. That’s not my story today.

My story is about a couple very dear and close to my heart, and the day they called to tell me that their 5th child, the baby she was carrying, had an irregular ultra-sound and would we please pray. Of course. And then the conversation turned to the quite dramatic medical diagnosis, the shocking news that the obstetrician recommended an abortion, and their plan, which wasn’t much of a plan. You see, all they were going to do was trust God.

That’s all. Not much, right?

Trusting in God’s plan was the right thing to say, but to really have the conviction? I know I didn’t have it at the moment. Still, I prayed with them. For them. For the baby. For some consolation and insight and understanding and strength and peace. And everything else that occurred to me. You see, they asked for prayers to learn what they had to do for their child. They never asked for a miracle to “fix” the grave and frightening realization that a  lobe of their child’s brain had not formed. It was a profound lesson in faith, this trusting in God’s plan and then working with it, instead of begging Him to change it.

The prognosis was hopeless. She’d have a miscarriage. She’d be stillborn. She wouldn’t survive the first 24 hours. She wouldn’t survive her first month. Every milestone that parents look forward to was always cast with the pall of death.

And yet, they chose life. Every. Time.

You might wonder what happened to that baby. I just spent the weekend with her. She’s a delightful young woman, very smart, very athletic, very … full of life. And capable of kicking some ass in this tough world everyone thought was going to own her.

Everywhere she walks is a march for life.