The CO- Project
Aug 16, 04:33 AM
What started off as a children’s and homeless ministry in early 2007, has become a consistent movement of good works, twice a week in Long Beach California to the homeless. Every Tuesday and Thursday evening, a group of friends meet up, prepare food, and take over a thirty mile drive to give to the needy.
The more profound work of this group is that they don’t minister without question. They rarely talk about their faith, and rather engage in an upfront conversion routine as most evangelists do, they talk about everyday life. It’s not that they can relate to what these displaced people have to say, it’s to listen to what they have to tell us. More often, the time passed there would become a slur of conversation; latter to us, after we’ve left, personal prayers.
Personally
The longer I’ve stayed with this group, the more I understood it’s purpose. We don’t feed them spiritually, only physically. We have no control on where they place their faith and hope. We don’t mind so much as to be open platters that feed the birds of the field, at the same time, mediating to make sure that everyone has a share of the seed. We serve the broken, the prideful, the greedy, the homosexual, the drug taker, and lost. We’re impartial to the current situation they are in. We’re there because we choose to be, not to judge or tell them the right way. Instead, we’re more like light. In a sense, we’ve come to a place where it’s dimmer than the rest. Hope wanders and falters at times. The people who know of us, hope that we’ll be there at the same time, and same places we meet. 
Every time we’ve come, the few who stay, they thank us and we hesitate to say “You’re Welcome.” We share this feeling of humility because it’s never been in our hands to not come. I know that it’s somehow over us, an unfathomable force that compels us. I feel and know that it’s God’s work that’s being manifested there every week. So I thank God always for it.
It has come to mind that most of us who serve have had a sense of “brokeness.” Most of us has lost hope in one way or another. I am in wonderment to know that in our worst, most selfish moment, we’d rather choose to go than sit comfortably at home. Every week there is somewhat different. We never know what to expect. When some of our best days started out hostile, and our worst days started out hospitable… it’s just life. We work in cooperation with the Spirit for everything in this.