A Heavy Night

I came into last week’s rescue mission chapel expecting a birthday party. 

A couple weeks ago one of my friends had a birthday and he loves German chocolate cake with berries so I had procured one from Vons and some candles for him. On the way, though, we came across a stranger who we would soon meet. It was clear that he was distressed and likely having a psychotic break. The man was standing in the middle of the street, muttering to himself, shirtless with only a blanket wrapped around his neck, shivering in the rain. We pulled over and I started talking to him, and after a while he told me his name. We started to walk down the street together and slowly made our way to the sidewalk. He started to calm down and talked to me about his dreams of being a clothing designer. He was shivering violently, so we stopped and one of the students I was with gave the man his fleece without a word. We kept walking and eventually made it to the Rescue Mission.

There was an unmistakable heaviness in the air that night. As one student reflected in our debrief circle at the end, “Tonight was just hard.” My friend, whose birthday it was, didn’t come that night, so I quietly sent the cake up, along with a card, to his room. There was no singing, no celebrating.

Why I am choosing to write about this night I do not know. For days after it, I was feeling only heaviness - the deep pain of walking with a man in the rain experiencing the throws of a mental health crisis his poverty had pushed him into. I too, felt what the student had articulated: that night had just been hard and the weight of it seemed crushing. But as I see a man suffering a psychotic break, I see another young man offer his jacket without hesitation. As I see this man sitting quietly in the back of the chapel talking to nobody, I see another student sitting next to him, sitting in the pain with him. I see the man from the street welcomed into a place of worship and fellowship, clothed and safe. 

I think that’s the kind of birthday party Jesus would have. It is a quiet sort of celebration, one you can almost not see if you do not look for it under the genuine pain and mourning of a situation like that night. But it is there - calling out to be seen.