Programs Ain't Gonna Cut It

I will try to leave it after today.  I will try to write about something else.  But you need to hear just one more of Denver's stories:

"George W. Bush walked right up to me and stuck out his hand.  "Denver Moore! What an honor to meet you, sir."


Well, I felt like I had to be dreamin now.  Here was the president of the United States of America, treatin me, a poor homeless man off the street, like I was some kinda important person.  I didn't know what to think.  I don't even remember what I said back to him . . . somethin 'bout bein glad to meet him, too, I imagine.  But I shook George W. Bush's hand and I ain't the smartest fox in the barnyard, but in that handshake I felt like a whole lotta history passed through: croppin all year just so I could pay the Man, passin by water fountains where a colored man couldn't get a drink, and spendin most a' my life bein called a nigger.  Bein dragged by my neck behind horses when I was sixteen years old.  Scratchin and scrapin and bathin in fountains in Fort Worth.  And now here I was, an ol' 'cropper with a prison record, shakin hands with the most powerfulest man on the earth.


Ain't nothin that can do somethin like that but love.  The love Miss Debbie had for the homeless had carried me all the way to the White House.  And while the president still had ahold a' my hand, God reminded me of that scripture where He says, 'Through Me, all things are possible."


Government programs aren't the answer. Just writing checks and handing out rights aren't the answer.  It won't happen without love.

I John 3:17 -- But whoso hath this world's good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?

excerpt from What difference do it make? by Ron Hall, Denver Moore, and Lynn Vincent