Lessons from the Homeless

Count me among the millions. It’s been a year since I lost the best job of my journalism career, working as an editorial writer and columnist for a family-owned newspaper.

Call it what you like – riffed, cut, layed off, let go – I joined the ranks of the nation’s unemployed.

Tears welled up in my boss’s eyes when he gave me the pink-slip. He’s a kind and gentle man.

Don’t worry, I told him. This is the right thing to do. I’m married.  My husband wouldn’t put me out on the streets. I won’t go without health insurance or food or even new shoes, so long as my husband keeps his job.

Having been raised by a single mom, I didn’t want a single parent to lose their job so I could keep mine. My kids are all grown, making their own way in this world. I didn’t need the job.

By all accounts, my chances for re-employment in the journalism field are slim to nil. Or as Mama likes to say, “You’re up a creek without a paddle.”

There are plenty who commiserate with me. The experts claim America is entering a “jobless era.”

“The unemployment rate hit ten percent in October, and there are good reasons to believe that by 2011, 2010, even 2014, it will have declined only a little,” says Don Peck in this month’s issue of the Atlantic. “For every open job in the U.S., six people are actively looking for work.”

What that means is that very few of us are going to be moving on up.

That’s not necessarily all bad. Times might be hard but that doesn’t mean life can’t be good.

When Jesus called his disciples together and empowered them with the gift of healing, he instructed them to “Take nothing for your journey, neither a staff, nor a bag, nor bread, nor money; and do not even have two tunics apiece.” (Luke 9: 3).

Why?

Being stripped of all of our creature comforts makes us dependent upon each other. It builds community, whereas, having an abundance of money or the stuff money affords can often isolate us, even in our own homes. Everyone is off watching their own TV, surfing on their own computer, or waxing their own cars.

Having cash in hand can make us more resistant to pain, both physical and emotional, says a study in the March issue of the Harvard Business Review. But it also has an isolating factor, reports the study’s author Kathleen Vohs, associate professor of the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management.

“When you’re poor, you ask your friends to help you move. You buy pizza and beer and get through it,” Vohs says. “Now I pay someone to move me. I pay a personal shopper to help me pick out clothes, rather than going shopping with my sister. I’ve become more efficient, but I bond less with others.”

Being needy can also sensitize us to the needs of others. We don’t think much about the unemployed until we become unemployed ourselves. As long as we have health insurance when we’re sick, we don’t worry much about those who don’t have it. When our bellies are full, it’s hard to understand hunger. Having never suffered from thirst, it’s hard to imagine walking miles to get a bucket of water.

Homeless people understand community better than the rest of us do. They have to depend upon each other, says Hugh Hollowell, director of Love Wins, a homeless ministry in Raleigh, N.C. Trusting in the goodness of  strangers is the only way homeless people can survive.

If we expect to survive these economically crushing times, we need to take a lesson from our homeless friends and start looking out for each other. In our fullness, we often forget about others. It’s in our want that we learn how to be a good neighbor.

Karen Spears Zacharias is author of Will Jesus Buy Me a Double-Wide? ‘cause I need more room for my plasma tv (Zondervan. 2010). She blogs at www.karenzach.com. Twitter @karenzach.