My ever-changing view of the world God sees

I simply devoured the book "Under the Overpass" by Mike Yankoski. A friend loaned me the book to read Monday night and I finished it within about two days. It is another one of those books that I think is redefining my worldview and what Christians should look like. I highly recommend this book. The book is basically Mike's journal as he stepped out from being a college student to being homeless for 5 months. He didn't do it as a project or even as a dare, but he needed to know if his faith in God was real and if he could actually be a Christian apart from the comforts he'd always known. The starting idea was this question - "What if I stepped out of my comfortable life with nothing bu God and put my faith to the test alongside of those who live with nothing every day?" Instead of trying to explain how it has challenged/encouraged me, here are a few of my favorite parts of the book that I marked to wrestle with as try to figure what God is placing in my heart.

• "What's worse? To not do dope or not love your brother? Why do we kick drug users out of the church while quietly ignoring those who aren't dealing with other, equally destructive sins? Why do we reject the loving, self-sacrificing, giving, encouraging, Jesus-pursuing drug addict but recruit the clean, self-interested, gossiping, loveless churchgoer? Which one do you suppose Jesus would rather share a burrito with under a bridge?"
• "The church was old and weathered. Above the mahogany double doors hung a sign in red letters: "No Tresspasing. Church Business Only." A new chain and two huge padlocks secured the gate at the sidwalk...Let's say your life is falling apart and you need help. Would you want to go there? Aren't the people in a sanctuary a whole lot more important that the sanctuary itself? We walked past a market that sold pop, beer, wine, cigarettes, pornography. The doors were wedged open. Ragged people came and went. It was one of the places that never close."
• "What says more about who you are in Christ - how loudly you say amen! in the service or how well you treat strangers in the foyer?"
• "What would happen, I wondered, if two rank, homeless strangers like Sam and I wandered in to enjoy the air-conditioning at my church back home? Good things, I hoped, but I wasn't so sure anymore. The months of rejection by church after church had given me my doubts. Regular church attenders tend to come to our places of worship to feel better, not to be hit with the unfamiliar, the uncomfortable, the threatening."