"Reading Rainbow" Book 7 - Week 7

This week for "Reading Rainbow" I read "Under The Overpass" by Mike Yankoski. I was referred this book by my best friend/older daughter Rachelle. She works with FCA and has been taking some amazing foreign missions trips. Thank Shell!

I say I read this book this week , but the reality was I read it in a day. I came home from work on Tuesday and started reading. I spent a little time with it and loved it. I took off that evening for some volleyball and when I returned I dug back into the book. I then could not put it down. I finished about 2:30 in the morning. I've never done that before. I was hooked with the story this book had to tell. I was so anxious to hear what would happen next, who the next character they met would be and if they were going to get enough money to eat today.

This book is basically Mike's journal from his trip. He was challenged while sitting in church one day that he was not sure his faith would withstand a true test. He then went on for the next year planning his trip to leave everything behind and live on the streets with the intention of seeing how God would work in and through Him when there was absolutely nothing for him to rely on except God.

The people he and his traveling partner Sam met were diverse. They met rude people, kind people, homeless, addicts, convicts, ministers and everything in between. What a way to see people. They saw people at their most vulnerable point. Not just the people living on the street with them, but the people around them making a decision as to what to do with this homeless man in front of them. I think that is the most challenging thought for me. How do I care for those in front of me.

This book wasn't a "how to care for the homeless" book. Mike did take time to share with us his thoughts on all of that, but it was more A journal of a journey. It was Mike's "fleece" before God to reveal Himself. It was Mike's personal test to approve His trust and faith in God. Here are some quotes from the book.

"I felt my frustration rising until I realized how unentitled I really was. No one deserves mercy. And no one walking by owed a dime. Mercy, is by definition, undeserved, or else it isn't mercy."

" A hungry man can be a fast learner. When you come to a table with nothing but need, you are grateful for things you might have pushed aside before. And when you kneel hungry and broken at His table, you receive a grace from Him you might at some other time, have completely missed."

"I wonder how much we miss because we are unwilling to pick it up...It's like asking God to bless your day, then when He puts a needy, smelly person in front of you that you could really help, you wonder what you did to deserve such rotten luck."

"Why do we so often overlook obvious ways to show the love of God we so proudly proclaim?"

"Having everything 'just because you can' is a trap. It numbs and blinds the human spirit. It can separate us from our calling and our privilege as Christians in this needy world.

"Sitting there with Sugar Man, I felt my carefully established definitions of a Christian, crack and expand. Here was an admitted addict and user openly proclaiming Christ in his community and asking how he could serve us...what's your definition of a Christian? Is it broad enough to encompass the drug dealers, pimps, prostitutes and broken people of the world? We all struggle with personal ways in which sin plays itself out in our lives...Why do we reject the loving, self-sacrificing, giving, encouraging, Jesus-pursuing drug addict, but recruit the clean, self-interested, gossiping, loveless churchgoer?"