My grandpa lived with my mom during the last ten years of his life. He spent much of those years in the sitting room at the back of the house. He ate breakfast, lunch and dinner in that room. He entertained visitors and pastors and great-great-great-grandkids from an easy chair in that room. Grandpa spent most of his time in that room in prayer.
Grandpa Oscar was a ‘prayer warrior’. As he got old, he couldn’t do much else, but pray. He prayed in silence; he prayed out loud. I think he even prayed in his sleep. He prayed for family, he prayed for friends, and he prayed for the President of the United States everyday. Grandpa Oscar suffered from macular degeneration, old age and dementia. He went deaf and blind, but not dumb; he just mumbled his prayers.
When grandpa wasn’t praying in the sitting room, he was staring up at two large pictures that hung on the sitting room wall. He couldn’t see the pictures clearly; he was technically blind. But he’d squint up at those pictures, close his eyes and nod his head while mumbling agreement. When Grandpa Oscar died, I made copies of those pictures.
Today, I take copies of those pictures with me out to the streets. When my homeless friends ask me to pray with them, I give them the pictures. I don’t tell everybody the story of Grandpa Oscar and how he gave to others through his prayers; I just give everybody the pictures.
I imagine that my friends make up their own stories when they look at those two pictures. Maybe they show the pictures to others. Maybe, they just give the pictures away. It doesn't matter … most of my friends end up sharing the pictures with others, along with prayers.
A prayer is a gift we give others … and nobody ever has to know.
Grandpa Oscar gave our family many precious gifts. Here’s two …
God bless us, all.
Guthrie on the River
The Guthrie will close the doors of its facility near Loring Park after the March 4th skid-row production of "Homely Please Help," the same capital campaign that launched the homeless shelter in the 60's.
But the Guthrie won't close for long. This June, the shelter reopens in the new Guthrie Gospel Mission on the River-a $125 million, 250,000-square-foot, 27-bed homeless shelter overlooking the Mississippi River. There will be an Open House on Sunday, June 25 with lunches served on all three floors.
From the cantilevered lobby jutting toward the river, 27 shelter users, staff and drop-in guests will be able to look below to the graceful stone-arch bridge and upstream to the North Side recycling yards. Next door to the shelter is the Minnesota Historical Society's Mill City Museum where many homeless used to live. Along the riverbanks lies Viking’s Cave in the city’s Mill Ruins Park, a cave named for a homeless man that used to live in the cave.
The Endless Bridge
One of the signature features of the new Guthrie Gospel Mission, the cantilevered lobby known as the “Endless Bridge” is an observatory of the Mississippi River homeless community. The designer’s primary goal was to create an exciting and endless place where folks with no permanent address could camp near the river. The only endless bridge for homeless camps in the world, the Guthrie’s Endless Bridge is quite a benevolent feat.
A new Depot Liquor is expected to open at the nearby Metrodome site by 2008. Officials expect that the 27-bed shelter will fill up quickly!
