Sunday, March 8, 2015

A Sunday message



Every time I want to post an article I saw on facebook I look up to see if another person had written about it and sure enough many have. Social media is that way. We share all we know so today instead of re-inventing the wheel I will share a post that made me cried.


‘Recently a social experiment was conducted titled “The Freezing Homeless Child”. A YouTube channel ockTV went onto the streets of New York to see how people would react if they saw a little boy disguised as a homeless person. For two hours this little boy stood without a coat in the freezing cold begging for food and money as hundreds of people flooded past him. Literally for two full hours not a single person stopped to help this boy. They didn’t even try to talk to him.


[Before I tell the rest of what happens I want to give a spoiler alert  – if you want to watch the entire video before you keep reading the rest of the blog you can click and watch it at the bottom of today’s post first before reading on]


Finally after two hours a man comes up to the boy who is now wrapped in a trash bag to keep himself warm lying on the street. This man sits next to him and asks how he is and takes off his own coat to place it on the little boy. He then asks if the boy is hungry and give him what little money he has in his own pocket. Next he leans down and hugs the little boy. He tells the little boy not to lose hope because he is a homeless person himself but he wants the little boy to know there is still hope for him. The only person, out of the hundreds and hundreds of people that walked by this freezing little boy on the street, that stopped to offer help was a homeless man…


“If you wait until you can do everything for everybody, instead of something for somebody, you’ll end up not doing nothing for nobody.” ~ Malcom Bane


What a wakeup call this video is for all of us. Every single one of us has the capacity to make a difference in other people’s lives every single day. Even if we just do the smallest acts of service for others we can make a huge difference. And most important, we should never see someone in need and not try to help in some way – even if it is just to let them know we care, or to give a hug, or to share words of hope, everything makes a difference…everything…”
 I remember vividly once when I came up to go inside the post office, there was a woman begging outside. She was wearing a scarf over her head either to keep warm or because she was Muslim, I remember going to my car to see if I had a pair of globes to give her and wanted truly to help her but didn’t know what else to do. People do not get involved because of fear to trust other people anymore.  The last thing you want is to become a victim of a crime and probably that is why people don’t usually get involved when it comes to help a homeless person. However the Church is always there to help and we should be very generous with our offering.


 

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