Putting a Face On The Homeless

Took in the movie "The Soloist" on Saturday night. This is an excellent movie based on a true story about Nathaniel Ayers, a gifted musician who suffers from schizonprenia and becomes homeless on the streets of Los Angeles. He is befriended by a Los Angeles Times reporter who discovers him playing his cello on the streets and begins writing in his column about him.
We went to this movie at the Roxy, a stately theatre in Saskatoon and as an added touch the theatre had a young lady playing the cello for about a half hour before the movie began. Very nice.
The movie, at least for me, really gets you thinking about the plight of homeless people. In the credits at the end of The Soloist, it is stated that there are approximately 90,000 homeless people on the streets of Los Angeles. Mind boggling when you consider the city of Kamloops population is about 90,000 and also that is more people than live in Red Deer and many other Canadian cities. I always a little skeptical about those numbers so I did some checking and it appears 90,000 homeless in
Los Angeles sadly is a pretty accurate number. Some reports said 75,000 homeless, some went even higher than 90,000.
Sad when you think about it. I mean I know there are all kinds of reasons for homelessness but in this day and age people living in countries like Canada and the United States and being poor and homeless really is a sad commentary.
The plight of the homeless has received a bit of a boost lately with this movie and also with the actions last week of Winnipeg's homeless hero Faran Hall. He is the homeless man who dove into the river to pull a child to safety. For that and rightly so
he has been recognized as a hero and honored and gifted. He's been rather modest about it all but perhaps the attention received may result in improvements for the homeless.
The real question is "What can be done about homeless people? We have some of the best social programs in the world and they do not seem to be solving the problem. One article I read the writer glibly quoted Jesus in Matthew 26:11 where he said
"the poor you will always have with you" as if that were some reason for not offering assistance to the down and out.
I could go on here about what Jesus was really saying and how that writer has taken the quote out of context but most people with an intelligent mind would get it.
I would remind that writer of Mark 10:25 where Jesus also said "It is easier for a camel to squeeze through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into the Kingdom of God" Now hows that for balancing the scales.