j e s r u s h . c o m

For a long time, I would walk or drive by panhandlers or homeless folks and ignore them. Everyone else did it, so it seemed like an acceptable response. And there are so many great rationalizations: They must be lazy… why don’t they just get a job? There are organizations out there who would take care of this person if they would merely cooperate. These guys make hundreds of dollars a day. If I gave them money, they would just use it to get high! The list goes on and on…

But the more I studied the life of Christ, the more uncomfortable I became with my response. One day I had a breakthrough epiphany. It seems so simple and obvious in retrospect, but for some reason it had never actually materialized in my mind: If Jesus were walking or driving by, it’s simply impossible to imagine Him ignoring these people.

If Christ wouldn’t ignore them, then I couldn’t either. So I started carrying around little cards with the names, addresses, and phone numbers of local charities. Whenever I met somebody around DC who needed help, I gave them the cards and offered to pay cab fare to get them there. In my naivety, I was stunned by the response: Most of them had already been to these places and nobody wanted to return. Back to square one.

I still felt like I had to do something, so I started giving them money. Five bucks. Ten bucks. Whatever I had handy. One day back in college I was walking down 16th street with a friend when I gave some guy twenty bucks because I didn’t have any smaller bills. My friend looked at me like I was an alien, “Don’t you know he’s just going to spend it on cigarettes and alcohol!?!?” I thought about it for a moment, and said: “Well, so was I.” This was college after all, and I had recently become obsessed with cigars and apple pie shooters. But his comment nagged at me anyway, what if I was fueling some horrible addiction?

Time passed and I kept giving money and kept worrying about it. Then one day I had a Eureka moment. I reached into my wallet to help some guy and realized it was empty. In my embarrassment, I gave him the only thing I could think of: a Starbucks gift card I’d gotten for Christmas. It later occurred to me that the only thing he could really do with that card was get some coffee. It wasn’t worth enough ($7) to trade or manipulate. I connected the dots and realized that the fast food joints were starting to push gift cards. Everyone likes McDonalds, and McDonalds is everywhere.

So I bought ten $5 McDonalds gift cards and stuck them in my car, wallet, jeans… everywhere I could think of. I started handing them out to people. The look on their faces was all the confirmation I needed: They were thrilled. And I didn’t have to worry that the money was going towards some drug habit. Brillant. I found out later that some of the charities were giving out gift cards too, especially cards for supermarkets. Though I’ve never run into any person or organization giving out cards for a quick meal.

I realize that the problems of panhandling and homelessness are a lot bigger than the question of what someone is going to eat tonight, and serious resources must be dedicated to sorting out those issues. And it’s not just about money, these folks need human love and spiritual support as well. But when it comes to the hungry guy standing on your corner right now, I think Christ would address him, and I think gift cards are an elegant way to help do so. I encourage you to try it.