Last Friday I joined a couple of dozen other souls in a church garden in Wimbledon to take part in the annual YMCA Sleepeasy event, which aims to raise awareness of issues around homelessness and to raise funds for the work that various organisations undertake to alleviate the problem. 

Basically the idea is to simply sleep out all night in a somewhat vain attempt to recreate the situation that a homeless person would find themselves in. To be honest, when I volunteered I thought that switching the event from its usual January date to the end of February would make it more bearable. 

I was wrong. 

No amount of clothing, no fancy sleeping bag, no number of cups of tea, could change the fact that sleeping out is a cold and bleak experience. The cardboard box I was given for additional shelter was my space, but it was still a cardboard box. I had a choice that either my head or my feet were slightly protected from the elements, but not both. It doesn’t take long for a numbness to creep into your entire body and you just keep repeating to yourself that time will pass and it will soon be over. 

In a little under two weeks’ time the homeless guys that I recently met at the Wimbledon Night Shelter will say goodbye to the final host church and be homeless once more (in fact, you could say that they haven’t really stopped being homeless). I hear that some of them have places to go, found for them by the brilliant Faith in Action and other such groups. But some of them do not. My one night of discomfort pales into insignificance compared to what they will face. 

Please pray for them. Please offer at least a smile and a kind word when you pass them on the street. But whatever you do, please don’t ignore them. They too, are God’s children. 

Defend the weak and the fatherless; 

uphold the cause of the poor and the oppressed. 

Psalm 82:3

If you would like to get more involved with helping the homeless, get in touch!