I don’t know what was different this time. I have been doing the homeless census for over 10 years now, so I knew what to expect — but last week felt…different. Maybe it was the rainy weather? The gloomy undercurrent of the government shutdown? The sheer number of people we found in cars and in camps? I don’t know why, but it felt different. More urgent.

I’ll admit, having been in social services for over 20 years, the work has a tendency to become routine. Even the census can start to feel rote. It’s tempting to find someone, ask the survey questions, offer a supply bag, and move on…. but tonight, when we came across an older, balding man lying in the back of a beat up suburban with his dog, I stopped. He was bedded down outside the ‘big’ Walmart in Mechanicsburg, it was my last stop of the night. I could have just done the survey, passed him some supplies, and been on my way, but something told me that this man needed more.

So I crawled in the back of the truck with him and started to chat, going beyond just the survey questions.  I looked around at his ‘accommodations’ and realized he had virtually no supplies, so I asked him where his stuff was.

He burst into tears.

Turns out, he’d never been homeless before.

“What about going to the shelter?” I asked.

He wouldn’t leave his dog – his only friend. So here he was, in his suburban, with the dog — hungry, cold, and running out of hope.

In that moment, the words of William Booth, theologian and founder of the Salvation Army, pounded in my ears, “you’ve seen a need, now, for CHRIST’S sake, DO SOMETHING!”

This was the theology I was raised on – looking at the homeless, the hungry, those in need, and seeing the face of God, and then DOING SOMETHING about it, for His sake. Tonight, Jesus looked like an older, balding white guy in a flannel, with an ancient golden retriever as His closest disciple.

I got out of his truck and ran back to my car, where I grabbed all the supplies I had left, along with a bag of food I had in the back seat of my car. I passed them into the truck, saying, “Here. Blankets. Stuff so you can clean up in the bathroom of the Walmart. Snacks and some water to get you through the night. You can get breakfast at My Brother’s Table in Carlisle at 8.”

He stared at the bags, and then back at me.

“All this is for me? Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. I wish I had more to give you.”

He broke into a grin. “You are an answer to my prayers.”  Now it was my turn to grin.

I gave him some pointers on where to go for help, and then said my goodbyes.

As I walked away, he called from his truck….

“Hey! Say a prayer for me if you think about it?”

I nodded, and as I looked at him sitting there in the truck, with his dog, going through his bags of supplies, and I knew, without a doubt, that I had seen the face of God.