by Marco Klaue
(This is an article I wrote in 2002 for our Street
Evangelism group at Trinity Western University. This
group goes out every Friday night to Vancouver’s
red light district, where we distribute hot chocolate
and do what we can to give some hope and love as well.)
Jesus is standing on the corner, wearing a mini-skirt
and tank top in the sub-zero Vancouver night. But
this isn’t Jesus. This is a sinful woman, who
routinely defiles one of the most sacred things she
owns, and makes a livelihood of it. But Jesus is approaching
her now, wearing a blue coat and holding a thermos.
Except that this isn’t Jesus either, this is
one of us, a TWU student out on a Friday night. We
may be using Our Lord’s name a bit too wantonly
here; but anything we do for her we also do for Him,
and whatever dim reflection of His love she sees in
our actions may be as clear an image of Him as she’s
ever seen.
“Hot chocolate?”
“Yes, please.”
This can’t be everything. A hot drink on a cold
night, this may be one of her more immediate needs,
but it is the least of them. She has had unspeakable
trauma in her past. Her present consists in submitting
to the perversions of strange men, and for her future
she has only an extension of this existence to look
forward to until she either dies an early death, or
becomes undesirable for men. Oh God, have mercy on
her, as I fumble with the Styrofoam cup to make the
time just a bit longer. This can’t be everything.
This is like trying to change the course of a river
by throwing rocks into it. It’s like putting
a band-aid on a shark attack victim. It’s like…
like… for God’s sake, we’re giving
hot chocolate to a prostitute. What do we hope to
solve?
What else can I do? Ask her how her night is going?
All these small talk devices acquire a somewhat paradoxical
and ironic tinge when directed to a lady of the streets.
So we ask if we can pray for her, and she says yes,
but doesn’t give her name.
And this may be all we can do for now. Some people
tell me that the hot chocolate is nothing, that what
these people need is salvation. But is that mine to
offer? Is the hot chocolate only a sales pitch for
peddling the gospel? In all humility we realize that
we can only do the least. It takes no gift of wisdom
to see that a lightly-dressed woman on a winter night
could use a hot drink. It takes no particular empowerment
by the Spirit to dispense this drink. In all our weakness
we can still see, and meet, the obvious needs.
She’s getting impatient with us standing around.
I guess it’s bad for business. We shuffle off,
still searching for appropriate words. “Have
a good night” means what exactly, to a prostitute?
“God bless you” probably works much better,
so we say that.
If Street-E has taught me nothing else, it’s
taught me that it is by being faithful that we will
bring about change, because such things take time.
Even under the hands of a skilled physician a shark
bite will take months to heal. Even our success stories
are usually preceded by we don’t know how many
years of efforts on the part of other Christians,
of soft whispers of the Spirit in quiet hours, of
smiles and sunrises and such details so small as to
seem trivial, trivial as a Styrofoam cup full of hot
chocolate. May we pray for miracles and believe. But
may we also accept our responsibility in the matter.
May we expect great things. But may this expectation
not trivialize the little things. May we preach the
word boldly. But a small action might just preach
louder than any sermon. And above all, may we be faithful.
None of us knows how many prayers, how many words
of encouragement, how many years, or how many cups
of hot chocolate go into the making of a child of
God.
