Darkness
It was 2012, late in the Fall. My family and I had just moved back home to Washington State about a year and a half prior, and I found myself working as a Night Crew Manager at a tiny grocery store in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle. My shift started at 11:00pm and ended at 7:30am, with a half hour lunch…in the middle of the night.
During the fall and winter I would rarely see the light of day.
When I got off work it would be dark.
When I went to sleep at home it would be dark.
When I woke up to go to work it would be dark.
Life felt like one long, dark day…with extended naps in the middle.
There was no night to “reset” my system. I lost track of what day of the week it was. Everything just blended together in a slow, dark, repetitive cycle. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was probably suffering from some form of mild depression. I was always tired, quick to anger, and rarely felt content or truly at peace. I wasn’t happy, and became very cynical and pessimistic.
My wife and daughter were, as always, amazing and supportive; but something was still just off. Because my sleep schedule was so different, we didn’t do much socially, and our attendance at things like church and other functions was spotty at best. When I did pull myself out of bed to do something outside of work, I was spacey and distant and mostly just thought about how I would rather be sleeping.
One of the hardest parts of working nights was the crowd that I often interacted with. I liked my co-workers (two other guys); but the average “customer” who comes into a grocery store at 3:00am on a random weekday isn’t always there to purchase food items.
I’d say that after about 12:00am or 1:00am, for every legitimate, normal customer, we had 4 or 5 people just coming in to steal. Night after night, I would encounter drunks and thieves…stealing left and right. It made me really start to dislike people in general. When you are constantly dealing with people coming in ranting and raving, smelling like human waste, and stealing detergent and liquor…it doesn’t exactly paint the greatest picture of humanity.
I started to hate people. I started to think the worst of everyone. Whenever someone would come into the store at night, my first thought was: Why aren’t you just at home asleep like a normal person? I didn’t give people the benefit of the doubt…I just doubted their intentions. I didn’t like feeling this way, but it was how I felt most of the time.
A Promise Motivated by Hate
One night, something happened that was somewhat funny, but at the time strengthened my distaste for the human race.
It was after 3:00am, on a fairly normal night. I man who I assume was homeless, rode his old bike up to our store and parked it by the front door. He was a white male, middle aged…about my height, with greying, frayed hair. He smelled like cigarettes, alcohol, and urine, and was dressed in baggy pants and several plaid shirts, layered on him.
He asked where our bathroom was, and we directed him back to the grocery backroom where the public restroom was located. I looked at my co-worker and we shook our heads, and went back to work. About 30 minutes later we realized that he had not come out of the restroom yet. It was a single person unisex restroom, with a door lock. We went back to knock on the door, to give him a warning that he had 5 minutes to “finish up” and get out. He slurred some response, and we figured oh great he is either drunk or shooting up, which happened often. We would usually find needles and drug paraphernalia in the restrooms at night…shoved in the garbage can, left in the sink…hidden in the upper back portion of the toilet. Real fun stuff.
We thought we heard him leave about 20 minutes later, so we didn’t think much of it after that. About two hours passed, and it was then around 5:00am. We started to see a few working professionals come through, and one went back to use the restroom, and noted to us that someone was in it, and they thought they heard snoring.
We ended up unlocking the door, and finding the man passed out drunk, next to two 6-packs of beer that he had stolen from us on the way back to the restroom (cameras confirmed this later), with has pants around his ankles, laying up against the bathroom wall, surrounded by empty bottles and broken glass. My co-worker woke him, propped him up, and I called the police, as he staggered out of our store. He grabbed his bike, and walked/wobbled (bobbing and weaving) across the street, where he sat down on the curb in front of a coffee shop.
He immediately passed out again, slumped over, falling straight forward basically folded in half, with his head between his knees, his arms stretched out in front of him, and his pants sagging down so far that his bare butt was hanging out; effectively mooning the coffee shop (Victrola) behind him. There he slumped for the next 2o minutes or so, unmoving, oblivious to world, mooning anyone who walked behind him.
The police never showed up. But the coffee shop owners did. Apparently, he was so still that they thought he was dead. They must have called 911, because a few minutes later, an ambulance showed up and the paramedics hopped out to go see if he was still alive. They woke him up, he looked around dazed and confused, gave them a “thumbs up” and they shook their heads, patted him on the back, and left.
He pulled up his pants, moved off the curb, and slumped against the outside wall of the coffee shop beside his bike. My co-worker and I laughed a little, and went outside to take a quick break. We were still frustrated that he had stolen from us, but somewhat amused at the whole ordeal.
Then something happened. It shouldn’t have angered me so much, but it did. A few minutes after the aid car had left, a patron from the coffee shop came out with a large warm drink and a sandwich in his hand. He bent down to the man laying against the building, and gave him the drink and the sandwich, smiled, and shook his hand. The drunk man smiled and waved goodbye to the charitable person, and began to eat his sandwich, all the while looking quite content and pleased with himself.
So after a hard night of getting blackout drunk on stolen beer, the man was rewarded with a freshly made sandwich and a warm drink to start off his day.
When I saw that, I swore to myself that from that day forward, I would never give a homeless person anything ever again. I was angry. I hated people. I even hated people’s charity. What I just witnessed didn’t seem right to me. What did this bum do to deserve this kind of care and compassion? All he had done was made my night a living hell, having witnessed him passed out drunk on stolen beer, having to drag him out of a restroom, having to call the police, having to clean up broken beer bottles and mop up spilled beer and urine! This was just stupid. He was a ridiculous person.
In that moment I was not loving, I was not compassionate, I was not caring…and I was not right.
I didn’t think of that man as a child of God. I didn’t want to show him love, and I didn’t want to show him forgiveness. I didn’t want him to receive mercy, I wanted him to receive what I thought he deserved: punishment. I judged him, and I wrote him off as a worthless person. A drunk. A loser. Then I lumped everyone else that is in similar circumstance in with him. In my heart, I decided that if ANYONE was drunk, homeless, or a criminal, or even down on their luck…that it was their fault, and they didn’t need any pity from me! They must all be just like this guy. They were “bad people” who did “bad things” and didn’t care.
I was wrong to think this way.
“You Shall Love Your Neighbor As Yourself”
In the Bible, Jesus is asked what the greatest commandment, or rather, what the greatest commandment of the Law is. He responds by saying:
“The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”
There is no commandment greater.
With the hundreds of laws and rules that are listed throughout the Bible, Jesus sums it all up for us. Now, I knew these verses, and I knew this teaching. But knowing something, and doing something are two different things. Sometime’s loving people is hard. Sometimes I don’t want to love others; let alone love them as much as I love myself.
I still remember how I felt that day when I saw a man who made so many bad (and illegal) choices rewarded. But it doesn’t fill me with anger and hate anymore. If anything, I am thankful that it happened, because it gives me perspective.
When I was working nights, I wasn’t just seeing darkness; I was living in it. I allowed myself to become jaded, and my heart to be hardened towards others, because I forgot the love of Christ. I drifted away from the light of God’s love. I forgot that Jesus doesn’t just love me, He loves everyone. He doesn’t just love the unlovable, He died for them too.
Jesus doesn’t see a drunk or a thief and think: That is a worthless person. He doesn’t see a Muslim or an atheist and say: They are the enemy! He doesn’t see gay man or a lesbian and claim: Oh they are just sinners! But He does see them…and He loves them. He shows His love through His death on the cross, for their sins, for my sins, and for yours.
Romans 5:8 says:
“But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
We are all sinners, and we have all fallen short of the glory of God. But He loves us anyway. I am thankful that I know this. I am thankful for God’s grace. For us, as flawed people, the richness and fullness of God’s undeserved mercy and grace is hard to comprehend. It is hard for us to embrace this unconditional love that God shows us, and then live our lives according to that undeserved love and affection.
I wonder what I look like to God? I wonder why He loves me? Don’t get me wrong, I know He does love me, and I am glad!
I wouldn’t be surprised that to God, I could look kind of like a drunk, stumbling around in the dark, lost in my sinful desires, searching for love and fulfillment in misguided and misdirected ways, smelling like urine and stale beer, with tattered clothes and matted hair.
A Life of Joy & Hope
I am thankful that I did not stay in darkness, living a cold and bitter life. I have seen the light of God’s love. When I see the cross that Jesus died on, I see a loving sacrifice. I see hope and light…even if it is a dark world sometimes.
When Christians (or people) are able to fully embrace the love of God and the grace that He shows us, then we live a life of joyful thanksgiving. We WANT to help people, we WANT to love people. Not because we stand to gain from it, but because we are so thankful for what has already been done, and we are so filled with God’s love for us, that we simply want to pass that on to others. We can’t help but pass on, and live out, God’s love in our lives.
Can you imagine what the world would look like if Christians truly did love God above ALL else and love our neighbors as ourselves? That would be revolutionary. That would change the world in drastic, dramatic, and amazing ways.
Christianity is not about judgement and condemnation. It is not about fear and isolation. It is not about feeling better than someone else, or more deserving than others. It is about experiencing the joy that comes through the knowledge of the saving act of grace that Jesus completed on the cross for all of us. It is about depending on Jesus, completely and solely. It is about forgiveness, hope, love, joy, peace, and mercy.
It is my hope, and my prayer, that all who I know and come in contact with will be able to experience this hope and joy that I now have. Every day I thank God for the mercy and love He has shown me, and shown others. My goal, motivated by thanksgiving and hope, is to step out of the darkness that surrounds us, and strive to live each day learning to love God more, and love others more. That, to me, is what living the Christian life is about.
“The Light shines in darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”
John 1:5
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