Daily Reading for June 13
Returning from the nursing home, I feel empty.
She who nurtured me no longer knows me.
Suddenly, I need to be taken care of.
The unkempt homeless man on the steps of the church invites me in.
“The food here is good,” he says.
Trained early not to talk to strangers, I think only, “Do I look poor or hungry?
Why should he call to me?” It’s his soup kitchen, and more his church than mine.
There is a noon Eucharist. How I’ve missed it.
Communion, and the taste of my mother’s kitchen. A meager celebration.
But the bread and wine feed my soul.
Outside, he calls to me again as I walk past.
“Did you get to eat? Did they feed you? Did you get what you needed?”
I glance back over my shoulder. He smiles.
“Yes,” my heart silently shouts.
He nods.
“Homeless Angel” by Julie Krause, in Women’s Uncommon Prayers: Our Lives Revealed, Nurtured, Celebrated edited by Elizabeth Rankin Geitz, Marjorie A. Burke, and Ann Smith. Copyright © 2000. Used by permission of Morehouse Publishing, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. www.morehousepublishing.com