A small, birdlike woman in her late 40′s or early fifties, she is older than most of the folks out here. She walks with a limp and has what my grandmother would have called a lazy eye. Sometimes she sleeps in a shelter, sometimes she sleeps outside and sometimes she sleeps at a friend’s house. Lately, she has had a room in a small rooming house. Let’s call her Cindy.

Last week I saw Cindy had, in her words, “had her hair did”. She had bought a home perm kit with her first of the month check and had a friend perm her hair. She just glowed and glowed, showing off her new hairstyle.

Cindy and I are at a point in our relationship where we can kid each other a bit.

“Are you on the prowl for a new man?” I ask her.

“Honey, they are on the prowl for me!” she sasses back.

Small joys, like a new hair do or a new place to live. The value of feeling pretty, in a world where bathing sometimes gets pushed to the back burner. Joking and laughing. Small things, but good things.

These small glimpses of joy in a very bleak world are what keep me believing in a gospel of redemption, of resurection, of restoration. Just like the smell of pies baking make me hungry for the pie itself, these small windows of joy show me the merest glimpse of what the Kingdom of God will be like when it comes to it’s fullness.

By some counts, there are over 2000 verses in the Christian Bible that discuss how we are to deal with the poor and the oppressed. There are so many that some have claimed that it is the largest single theme in the scriptures.

I relayed this to some friends the other day, and they doubted both pieces of information. So, I thought I would investigate.

While I do not intend to tackle all 2000 verses (was that a sigh of relief I heard out there?), I am planning to take many of the major, plain teachings of scripture on the issues that today we would call Social Justice and blog about them, one passage at a time.

The Social Justice Bible Study will go up twice a week, on Tuesdays and on Thursdays, so we can study and digest them together.  This way we (myself included) can consider them together and discuss it, calmly, in the comment box following each post.

NOTE: If you want to be sure you get to see each post in this Bible Study, you may want to sign up to read our blog posts in your email inbox. When we update the blog, you will receive the text of the post in your inbox automatically!

Photo Credit: Josh Self

Today, I spent the afternoon helping a 55 year-old man move his worldly possessions from a mini-storage unit to the rooming house room he rents. There is so much I could say about the experience and the lessons that could be derived from it, but the biggest thing that hit me was that here we had a 55 year old man who has lived in the area his entire life and he had no relationships strong enough to help him move his stuff.

How does this happen? How is it that in 55 years you have not built any lasting relationships that you feel good enough about to ask for help? Instead, you are reduced to asking for help from this crazy missionary guy you barely know, who is more than willing to give up two afternoons in order to help you move the stuff you should have moved months ago, but you did not know who to ask for help.

People get tired of hearing me talk about relationships, but the longer I do this the more convinced I am that the key is in the strength of our relationships. I know a little of his story – the broken promises, the lost potential, the misplaced faith, but still: 55 years and I was the only one he felt comfortable calling.

photo credit: MargretheH

Gina and her husband took some pictures of the Picnic in the Park on the Fourth of July. Here are a few samples, all of the pictures she sent are loaded on our flickr account, where you can look at them, comment on them and share them with your friends.

By the way, Gina earlier this week wrote an account of her experiences at the picnic on her blog.