By Bonny Ibhawoh,
Every city in the world has its share of the urban homeless. Like many people, I am sometimes guilty of assuming that all urban homelessness is self-inflicted. “They just don’t want to work”, “He must be on drugs”, “She should go find a shelter.”
In this gut-wrenching video, Ronald Davis, a homeless man in Chicago, forces us to rethink our assumptions about the homeless. He says: “It’s really humiliating to be shaking a cup 24 hours a day, and people just look at you’re like some kind of little bum,” Davis goes on to tell stories of how passers-by call him a bum and yell at him to “get a job.” He also tells of his struggles to get a job and leave the streets.
“I’m not a bum,” Davis says, “I’m a human being.”
Come to think of it, if Jesus lived in any urban city today, he would be labelled a bum. He was itinerant, had no visible means of livelihood and relied on the charity and good will of others. He also had “no place to lay his head.”
Luke 9:58: “And Jesus said unto him, Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head.”
Lesson: We must strive to be less judgement of others and see the above all else, our collective humanity.
