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NOWHERE MAN #4
THE DAD WITH A PLAN
We’ve spent three days here on the radio with a series
entitled NOWHERE MAN . . . and we still haven’t made reference to the
old pop song by John, George, Paul, and Ringo where the title was made
famous. Maybe you remember the lyrics:
“He’s a real Nowhere Man; Living in a Nowhere land.
Making all his Nowhere plans for Nobody. Doesn’t have a point of view;
Knows not where he’s going to. Isn’t he a bit like you and me?”
And as long as we’re doing a bit of Thursday borrowing
from the popular culture of the long-haired 1960s, we might well observe
that this motif of “nowhere man” has been an effective one out in Hollywood.
Every now and then you see a TV show or film where some person is suddenly
STRIPPED of their ID. They try their ATM card; it doesn’t work. They go
into the bank; all the accounts have been frozen. In fact, all of a sudden,
none of the tellers even recognize Mr. Jones. Where he’s banked all his
life.
Maybe you recall The Net, where a computer-hacking Sandra Bullock found
herself with all traces of her SELF abruptly gone. Social Security number.
Driver’s license. Address. Everything. Just like that, she was a cyberspace
cipher. An old whodunit named Capricorn One had a flustered Elliott Gould
trying to sleuth out some naughtiness at NASA. And all at once, the person
he was chasing had just vanished. Someone else was in the guy’s apartment,
and claimed to have been there several years. Magazines on the coffee
table had the new person’s name on them. The name on the lease was different.
People just couldn’t remember that the former guy had ever even existed
on the same planet with them.
Well, you know, that’s celluloid fiction, and sometimes it makes for a
good story. But there’s nothing very entertaining about the REAL episodes
that happen all around us. Our own L.A. Times just had a story, written
by Doraya Sarhaddi Nelson, about child homelessness here on the mean streets
of Los Angeles. “Adrift at a Tender Age” tells about a 14-year-old boy
named Brian. Smart kid; he got medals in science and math in elementary
school. Now he’s a high school freshmen, but already taking second-year
algebra. Getting an easy A in the class. Plays a “mean game of chess.”
Attending Santa Monica High, which is one of the more upscale schools
here in L.A.
There’s just one thing. Brian is living in a van. He and his mom and his
sister and three dogs have been homeless for half a year. No child support
from the ex-husband. So they literally live in the family van, and scoot
from one Westside parking lot to another whenever they’re kicked out.
They use supermarket restrooms and take showers at public facilities down
at the beach. “It’s uncomfortable; it’s cold,” Brian tells this reporter,
careful to just give her his middle name so his friends at school won’t
find out he’s homeless.
So here’s this kid. Hacking along, hiking for half an hour to a school
packed with well-to-do kids. He sneaks over to the cafeteria where he
qualifies for free breakfast and lunch. Then get this: at night he does
his homework there in the van, until it’s just plain too dark. Then he
goes over to a nearby laundromat, and does his advanced algebra problems
under the fluorescent lights at the laundry, sitting there in one of those
hard plastic chairs, with the smells of detergent and bleach and the flap
flap flap sounds of strangers’ clothes in the row of dryers.
And this is his life. His younger sister is so smart that she’s attending,
via scholarship, a private school where the kids of Hollywood stars all
go. She hobnobs all day with the rich and famous, and then retreats to
that van to do her homework and dream about the day when she’ll be something
more than the Nowhere Girl.
One thing you could say DEFINITIVELY about kids like these, and about
their struggling mom, is that they never PLANNED for life to end up like
this. Again that Beatles line: “Making all his nowhere plans for nobody.”
It’s not like that for these homeless children. In fact, this Brian still
dreams of being a veterinarian or pediatrician. And you know what: I’ll
bet he makes it too. But so often, a Nowhere Man or a Nowhere Woman or
a Nowhere Kid just ends up tumbling, tumbling, tumbling, down to the gutter
in a heap, like those damp clothes in the dryer at the laundromat. Despite
their plans, the stacked deck of life just knocks them down.
There’s a marvelous Bible passage that Christians often call the “Hall
of FAITH.” It’s found in Hebrews chapter 11, and it describes so many
people who went through adversity. Or persecution. Or homelessness. Sickness
and suffering. And yet they were able to hang in there. Partly because
they were just good people, good stock, like this amazing ninth-grader
in that van. But also because they trusted in a heavenly Father, a God
who had given them a guarantee about a better future.
Take a look at this chapter 11 sometime today when you have a free moment.
You know, we tend to read just the first half where the really big names
are featured: Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Joseph, Moses.
But down beginning in verse 32 is kind of a “B” list: smaller names. In
fact, the author actually says: “I don’t have time to tell you about these
guys too: Gideon, Barak, Samson, etc.” But notice the life-in-the-van
ambience of THEIR lifestyles:
“Some faced jeers and flogging, while still others
were chained and put in prison. They were stoned; they were sawed in two;
they were put to death by the sword. They went about in sheepskin and
goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated.” And I love this P.S.:
“The world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains,
and in caves and holes in the ground.” And today we might add: “In vans.
Under bridges. In Pasadena’s ‘Old Town,’ where homeless teens hang out.”
And you know, some of these Bible heroes of faith lived
their entire lives “in the van,” so to speak. The welfare worker never
DID come through for them; the promised free apartment, the food stamps,
the job offer, just never did happen. But I want you to notice the closing
line of Hebrews chapter 11 — and really, I wish I could just drive right
down to that Santa Monica laundromat, so that before this anonymous kid,
Brian, does another single algebra equation, he’d get to hear these words
about Someone who DOES have a plan for him. Here’s verse 40:
“God HAS planned something better for us so that only
together with US would they [the Bible heroes just listed] be made perfect.”
You know, friend, I’ve never been homeless. For
more than five decades, I’ve always had a place. A bed, a family, a name.
So I can only imagine — but I DO imagine that one of the hardest things
about being a “nowhere person” on the streets is to wonder: does ANYBODY
have a PLAN to help me? And will that plan someday kick in? If the welfare
office says, “Hang in there until November 15 — well, with today being
the 17th of October, you could probably tough it out another month.” IF
someone has a plan.
Well, here’s the Word of God Himself. “I’ve GOT a plan,” He says to us.
And whether we’re homeless or living in the nicest estate home IN Santa
Monica, California, we ALL have our moments when SOMETHING, some aspect
of our “ID” is fragile. Every human being, at some time or another, takes
a hit in the ego, in the self-esteem department. But notice that God not
only has a plan, but that this plan is going to be fulfilled in such a
way that, together with the Bible’s most dynamic heroes of faith, we AND
THEY will get the call to glory at the same time. THAT is an unbelievable
thought! Payback time, reward time, for this laundromat algebra kid, Brian,
and for Barnabas and Bartholomew will happen simultaneously.
And God says: “You guys were homeless? Check out these mansions. Hungry
most of the time? Examine for yourselves the menu at MY supper smorgasbord.
Did you miss academic opportunities? Did you not get to go to an Ivy League
college because you were sleeping in a van in a Santa Monica parking lot?
I’ll give you an ETERNITY now to pack your brain with the wonders of all
MY universe; in fact, I’ll teach you Myself. I’ll mentor you one-on-one.”
And then God leans even a bit closer. “Did your dad not pay his child
support? Did he leave you? Did you feel alone without a father? Now you’ve
got Me. Don’t worry about support ever again; I’ve got the whole government
on My shoulder . . . and room for you there too, Brian. And Barnabas.
And Bartholomew. And all of you.”
The Lennon/McCartney songwriting team described it: “Making all his nowhere
plans for nobody.” It sounds like, for God, it’s just exactly the opposite.
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