"Hi, I'm Steve. Who are you?" I said to the young man in Hope's parking lot.
   "Oh, hi. I'm 'Jason' . . . I was just checking to see if the drop-in center was open."
   "It will be in a few minutes . . . good to meet you . . . glad you're here. It's not a day to be on the street."
   I looked at his feet - red low cut Converse Allstars.
   "Hey, man, where are your boots? We've got nine inches of snow and slush everywhere. What's the deal?"
   The deal, as it turned out, was that "Jason" had been released from Auburn Correctional Facility on New Year's Eve, given his forty bucks, a change of clothes and a bus ticket to Newburgh. He managed to connect with parole and has been spending his nights at the Newburgh Ministry.
   Winter boots were not part of the deal.
   "What size you wear?"
   "Eight or nine . . . it doesn't matter."
   "We'll it would if I came back with size sevens!" We laughed. "Let me see if we have anything that would work."
   We'll, we didn't have any boots anywhere in the place and my size twelves are a tad too big.
   "Add boots to the list of things we need," I said to myself. "Put them right up there with white socks and underwear and winter gloves." (See our Wish List over there on the left.)
   My conversation with "Jason" connected me with next Sunday's lectionary readings, especially Matthew 3:13-17, the story of Jesus' baptism. For example, there's the part where a voice from Heaven said, "This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased." It reminds me we are all God's beloved; the author of 1 John tells us as much. God may not be happy with some of the stuff we do, but that does not change our belovedness. It was a key part of Jesus message to all of us. You can hear it in the Beattitudes, in his lament over Jerusalem, and in Luke's telling of the so-called Parable of the Prodigal Son . . . We're loved by God with a love that has no end.
   As Henri Nouwen said, our spiritual task is the claim the truth of our belovedness and to live our lives based on that reality  (If you don't know Henri Nouwen, click here for about eight minutes of his sermon on the subject. You won't regret it!). Hummmm . . . live our lives based on the knowledge that we are God's beloved children . . . loving others and acting out of that love. That's when that other verse caught my attention. You know . . . the part where Jesus tells John that he's gotta be baptized "to fulfill all righteousness." That's a biblical way of saying, "we gotta do this 'because love can do no less, it's what we've been called to do."
   When I meet new friends like "Jason" I struggle with how well we - our society/culture/nation - are doing with that "fulfill all righteousness business. And, this week, on the 50th anniversary of declaration of the War on Poverty, I think we're not doing so well. More of our fellow citizens live below the poverty level than ever before; the national minimum wage of $7.25 is less than half the living wage; 1.3 million Americans lost their long-term unemployment benefits effective January 1; SNAP (formerly Food Stamp) benefits were cut by five percent in November, and folks like "Jason" must struggle with all their might to succeed in spite of a system that's designed to make them fail.
   It's depressing.
   Pardon my for anthropomorphizing, but sometimes I imagine God saying what so many parents are wont to say - "where did I go wrong?"
   I figure it's a rhetorical question. If God "went wrong," then God doesn't need us to add anything to the discussion. What you and I can do, though, is to have compassion for God and move to alleviate some of God's suffering by serving others and working for the justice that has so far eluded us.