She didn’t fit in.

There in the shadow of our state capitol, as 400 people—men, women and families—gathered for their Sunday meal, the young girl didn’t quite fit in with the crowd.  Not that new faces are unusual in this place.  Chris Mucha and Carson Thaxton meet new folks among the homeless every time they visit the Trinity Kitchen at Trinity UMC.  But this girl was different.  Young, pretty, pushing a bike beside her, she looked like she should be on her way home from school, not drifting along an empty Sunday street in downtown Atlanta.

Chris and Carson did what they have done with so many other homeless folks in that place.  They talked with her.  Mostly, they listened.  She told them her name was Lu.  She was 15, from Florida.  There were problems at home—her parents were upset about a guy, and she was upset with them.  So, she had taken the family car the day before and headed north.

Her plans were sketchy at best—something about leaving the car and taking a bus to North Carolina and some place she vaguely remembered there.  Whether the guy was a part of those plans or not, we don’t know, but, as it turned out, she didn’t have enough money for the bus ticket anyway.  Her plan pretty much stalled at step two.  Her hope was to stay in a shelter for the night and try to come up with more money the next day.

Chris and Carson convinced her to call her parents, then they consulted with Becky Davenport at the Youth Protection Home.  Next, they arranged for Lu a place to stay in Fayetteville, spoke with the sheriff in her hometown and with our police here, and coordinated schedules with her family.  I met the girl only briefly on Monday before her mom and some friends arrived to take her home.  She seemed like any other kid who comes through this place, a little shy, a little uneasy in a 15-year-old sort of way.  I had a hard time imagining her stealing the family car and heading to the big city.  And I don’t WANT to imagine what might have become of her had two youth ministers not struck up a conversation with her on that downtown street.

I’m not one to hang out at homeless shelters on Sunday afternoons, but because a couple of people I respect and love were doing just that, one kid found her way home and a family’s anguish was eased.  Carson and Chris didn’t know they would meet Lu that day, but they knew they would meet someone, so they brought with them faith, hope, and a willingness to get to know whomever chance or providence brought their way.  The result was a small explosion of grace just powerful enough to reveal God’s love and change at least one life.  Not bad for a Sunday afternoon.

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