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I wonder if Job’s “friends” had ever personally sat at the Sufferers’ Club table. If they had never been exposed to their own “valley of shadows,” it’s no wonder that they were limited in their ability to relate to his. They started out well when they “sat on the ground with him for seven days and seven nights. No one said a word to him, because they saw how great his suffering was.” If only they had remained there on the ground, lips sealed.

There’s nothing like having a friend with whom very little needs be said. Silence, in such cases is “golden.” That’s real fellowship!

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– Originally published in The Other End of the Dark: A Memoir About Divorce, Cancer, and Things God Does Anyway 

One of my favorite things is to preach good news about Jesus on the street. Frankly, I’m not super good at it. I’m not trying to be humble, I just know that there are others better suited for this particular task. Nevertheless, I love doing it because it feels so right to bring hope to hopeless places.

Pretty much everyone agrees that the Tenderloin is the most hope-deprived neighborhood in San Francisco. It’s kind of the last stop for people who’ve passed through all the less degraded places in the City. Most everyone here sleeps in doorways, in overcrowded shelters, or SROs (single room occupancy) slum hotels. Hope moved out of these streets of addicts, alcoholics, dealers, and mentally disabled long ago.

These are not necessarily people whose dreams have shattered. Most of them came into this unkind world with no dreams to begin with. Sometimes; after hearing their lifelong…