break my heart for what breaks yours.

I sang this line from a song all day today. "Break my heart for what break yours."

Today Suz and I tried something new. She found out at her church about a guy that runs a service for homeless people. We weren't sure what to expect, but we knew that it happened on Wednesday nights, and we figured that we would check it out and if we liked it, we'd come back and if not, it was just one night.

We got there and I began to understand more of what it was. It was open two days a week; Wednesday and Sunday nights. The people could come in, get shower and a clean set of clothes. After giving them clean clothes, the place takes the dirty clothes, washes them, and then when the people come back the next week, they are given their old clothes back.

It seems like such a basic, practical thing. I never in my whole life, would have come up with the idea. It's small. It only has two showers and one washer and dryer; but in the time I was there (two hours or so), I saw about 10 - 15 people get a shower and new clothes.

One old lady, about 80 years old, came in. She was SO tiny...a good 8 or 9 inches shorter than me, and a little hunched over. We tried to give her a new coat. Every coat she would see and say, "It's too nice for me." She didn't think she was worthy of any of the clothes there. We ended up giving her a red coat. It was bright and huge and she laughed at herself because she couldn't believe that she would be wearing something "so nice." It's times like these I wish I could speak Chinese. I would have told her how beautiful she looked and that she is worthy. Not just worthy of a coat, or a sweater but to be treated with respect and to be loved.

God broke my heart tonight. He showed me this new group of people that I would have never paid attention to before tonight. There are a lot of homeless people in Shanghai, but I usually just run by them, hoping that they won't stick their hand out at me. Tonight I realized that they're people too. They like to joke and have fun, play Jenga and practice the litle bit of English they know. I know that God broke my heart tonight because the way these people live, the circumstances they're in, is what breaks his heart.