So a few weeks ago I started a new job. A job I’ve been wanting to for ages. Well since mid way through uni at least. You’d think that with a first class degree in Electronics I’d be working for a mega research company inventing time machines… But no, I work with people. In fact my job is more akin to a social work degree!

Going back in time a little. I moved back to my birth place to go to uni. Having grown up mostly in a rural area, we never saw homeless people. So moving to York was an eye opener. Within 10 mins of my first CU meeting someone stood up and invited freshers to get involved with the homeless project. I liked the idea of this so went along with a friend.

It took me a while to get into it but before long I was out each week with project. We would meet on campus, armed with food, hot drinks & some Jesus. We’d walk into town and wander round in two groups visiting the places we expected to find a homeless person. As the weeks went on we developed relationships with ‘the guys’. We’d get to know their situation and we’d often pray with them.

"I hate, I despise your religious feasts; I cannot stand your assemblies. 

Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them. 

Though you bring choice fellowship offerings, I will have no regard for them. 

Away with the noise of your songs! I will not listen to the music of your harps. 

But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!

Amos 5 v 21-24

At the start it was a duty thing but then God started to break my heart for them. He showed me his heart for the poor and that these people are just as much of a neighbour to me as anyone else. Poor people weren’t just in Africa. I read scriptures like Amos 5 & Isaiah 58 and was convicted – how can people walk past a homeless person.It came to the end of the year and that meant two things to the CU. The old committee and leaders go out and they pray in a new team. For them it meant sitting in a room and asking God who should be the ones to move the CU on to bigger and brighter things. This meeting usual took hours (I was in the same meeting a few years later so I know).

A day or so after I got a call off the old CU social action rep (aka the guy who led the homeless project), I was asked to be one of the new reps. It seemed the right thing to do but obviously I did the good Christian thing and went away to pray about it. There was no booming voice from heaven saying don’t do it so I accepted.

"Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke?

Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter— when you see the naked, to clothe him, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?

Then your light will break forth like the dawn, and your healing will quickly appear; then your righteousness will go before you, and the glory of the LORD will be your rear guard.

Isaiah 58 v 6 - 8

So I started to lead the project along side two great friends, one an official social action rep, the other was unofficial but we all knew he was supposed to be there. As time went on we started to pray weekly about the project and inject a little bit of new life into it. We started to go out twice a week rather than just once. We prayed together in town before we went out. We really felt God was moving the project on.

This wasn’t to say that what had been done before was bad, it’s just that God used us to bring an extra facet to the project. In fact the leaders that took over from us did the same, they brought it on further still. They used a church vestry in town to pray in before and after the project, making our 5 min prayer time seem pitiful. Sure enough the team after that did the same too, adding more. You can see how God was working, taking us and using us all to make what was a maybe a scrawny dream into a beautiful pearl.

While we were the leaders we would sit and reflect on the state of the world, in particular how a rich city like ours could walk past the poorest of the poor pretty much every minute of the day. We would dream of opening our own homeless shelter, based on Christian values, where God would heal the wounds and remove addictions, we’d read Jackie Pullinger’s Chase the Dragon…We graduated from uni all started to look for jobs, we all applied for the homeless jobs. I think we all applied for the early intervention and prevention team at the Salvation Army, but no joy. We applied to the council, York Nightstop, foundation housing and others too. Had God forgotten about our heart for the homeless of the city? WE could REALLY make a DIFFERENCE. But God can certainly make a bigger difference, we just have to let Him.

So now I do work in homelessness, I work at Arclight – a hostel for the homeless in York. Well actually it’s not a hostel, it’s a place of change. A place where people can come in, shelter from the bad weather of life and start repairing and rebuilding their lives. My job there is to help this change happen. Exactly what I’ve wanted all along, exactly what those other jobs wouldn’t have given. God knew way back when we were applying for all those homeless jobs before…

If you’d like some more info on Arclight then email me; mark.ainsworth@york-arclight.co.uk. You might want to volunteer or something. But my advice and plea to you is next time you see a homeless person, take some time to chat to them and get to know them, who know’s what could happen.

He has showed you, O man, what is good.
And what does the LORD require of you? 
To act justly and to love mercy 
and to walk humbly with your God.

Micah 6 v 8

-------Mark attends The Ark Church in York and wishes he could play guitar as well as this picture suggests...