Sarah "Elle" Floyd: Grace

I was not going to help the man, the man I always saw from the bus window on the way to Spanish class. He was sitting on the concrete outside of the Ruben Dario metro station. His black toboggan hat was pulled low over his ears against the cold. He was holding a grimy green plastic cup. He held it up halfheartedly, eyes cast down, every time a flood of people exited the subway. I saw him every day. And I was not going to help him.


I had a long and well-rehearsed list of reasons why not, too. I repeated them every time my bus passed him. "He should just get a job." “He might just use that money for drugs. I can’t support that.” “If he's begging on a street corner, he obviously did something wrong.” And on top of that, “It’s not safe,” “I’m just a young white woman alone,” “I’m just a poor college student,” and “all I have is 20€ in cash. I might need it for an emergency.” I was not going to do it. it was just a bad idea.


I wasn’t always so callous and full of excuses. When I was a little girl, my little heart used to break at reading those pitiful cardboard signs the homeless would hold up on street corners. But my Christian parents never stopped to help them. As I got older, I learned to be afraid. I learned to make excuses. And I learned it was harder to help when it was my hard-earned dollars at stake, not someone else’s. By the time I got to college, I was totally comfortable with the callousness I’d adopted in the name of self-protection: “I don’t stop for homeless people.”


Then I went to Madrid.


Madrid is a sparkling, cosmopolitan city with a chronic homelessness problem. Spain has been slowly struggling out of a long economic downturn. Their unemployment rate is still around 15%. Madrid got hit hard because so many suddenly disenfranchised people came to the capital to look for work. If they didn’t find it, sometimes they ended up on the streets. Learning this was my first wake up call to the idea that homelessness often isn’t caused by personal failure. But I didn’t know all that when I landed. And I don’t know what the numbers are. I just know I saw people asking for money everywhere.


At first I could pretend I didn’t notice. “That’s just how life is in the big city.” That’s another excuse I used to ignore people while I was enjoying my time abroad. But after a while, the sight of the blind woman or the injured young man on the corner did start tugging on my heart again. Not to worry. I had an arsenal of excuses, locked and loaded, with which I shot down every pesky compassionate urge. Until I met the man on the yellow line train.


I was on the subway to church, dressed up, reading my Bible app, when he boarded. I turned to ignore him, preoccupied with my Bible-reading. But I overheard him. “Una moneda. Un centimo. Diez centimos por favor. No tengo dedos. No puedo trabajar.” A coin. A cent. Ten cents, please. I don’t have fingers. I can’t work. My compassion or my curiosity got the better of me. I turned to peek at him. Oh.


He must have been the victim of a terrible accident. His skin looked stretched and splotched, like he’d been burned. He was holding his burned palms out. A few people gave him coins. Most gave him nothing. I knew just enough Spanish to understand that he wasn’t lying – he didn’t have fingers. All my excuses were shattered. Of course he couldn’t work. What job can you do without fingers? He shuffled passed me, within 2 feet of me. And somehow I still didn’t give him a dime. I told myself, “it’s not my job to help him. Let the Spanish government do it. That’s what they do.” I ignored him and looked back down at the Psalm I was just reading. I had just highlighted Psalm 34:21 -

“The wicked borrows and does not pay back, But the righteous is gracious and gives.”

My face flushed with shame. I’d screwed up, big time. I looked up. The man was gone. Gone. I’d lost my chance to undo this screwup. I’d never see him again.


To say I felt bad would be an understatement. I’d been a judgmental a-hole. And by being a judgmental a-hole, I’d lost the chance – so many chances – to help other people. I’d ignored people – people who were old, blind, or injured, or asking for help from the world. I’d made terrible, false assumptions about them because I’d rather not take the chance of being swindled out of .50€. But the man on the train… he wasn’t lying.


My excuses were unacceptable. Going to church and reading the Bible would never do anyone any good if I didn’t do what the Bible said.


I did help the man sitting outside of Ruben Dario. I took him a paper bag of snacks. I started keeping snacks in my backpack and handing them out to anyone who was publicly asking for help. And sure, some of them were probably lying. But some of them weren’t. And I figured, if I have to give away a few muffins to some swindlers to put food in the hands of someone who’s hungry, ningun problema.


Remember how I mentioned I was on my way to church when I met the man on the train? That church has an outreach for people who are homeless. I got to participate in that too. A few of us volunteers got together on Wednesday nights, made sandwiches, and passed them out in La Plaza Mayor. That’s how I met Lucas.


He came to get a sandwich, and, instead of leaving, he leaned against a column to listen to us. He told me he was Polish. He said he was 34, but he looked closer to 40. He said he’d been put in prison when he was 17, just after his son had been born. He’d been released not many years ago, but the mother of his son had taken the baby and vanished. So he’d come to Madrid to start a new life. Here he’d met Angela, an immigrant from South America. They had a little girl, Angelica, “mi angel,” he said. He wanted to marry Angelica’s mother: “intentamos casi quince veces, pero no vale. No tenemos los papeles.” He got tears in his eyes. He told me, if it were just him, he’d have given up long ago. But he had to keep trying to find some kind of job to keep Angela and Angelica in their little apartment. Sound like a con job? Maybe. If it was, I guess he photoshopped the picture of him, a pretty young woman, and a toddler.

My heart broke again. This time, not over my reaction, but over his whole insurmountable situation. I’d opened my heart. I’d done what the Bible said. I’d come to help. I’d given. I’d really tried. Only to find out there was nothing I could do about such a tragedy. What was one sandwich going to do to help Lucas meet his now 17-year-old son? Or help him keep his daughter off the cold, dark, wet streets? Nothing. I felt for him. But I also felt how small I was compared to the problem. It’s not just hunger. It’s not just a lack of healthcare. It’s not just homelessness. I felt like the whole world was broken and dysfunctional and irreparable. I told Lucas that God loved him in that same persistent way he loved Angelica. He really did try not to cry. The men in my volunteer group invited him to a job-skills training session on Saturday. I hope he went. I never found out.


Lucas disarmed my last excuses. Later, I realized that he, unlike the man on the train, fit the homeless strawman: ex-convict, unwed parent, jobless male. He fit the stereotype on which all my excuses were based. “He made bad decisions. He deserves it.” But now that didn't matter to me. Ok. Maybe he was a bad person. So what? I was a bad person too. Maybe I hadn’t made big, visible mistakes. But I had spent my life ignoring people who had. I had spent hundreds on souvenirs and Spanish snacks and trips to other cities, pretending I didn’t have anything to give anyone in need. So I suck. We all suck. But if I was going to refuse to help bad people, I might as well stop helping myself. And my family. And everyone. If I didn't believe bad people could change, I might as well stop going to church, reading the Bible, and claiming to follow Jesus. He was all about changing bad people's lives. He healed lepers, befriended tax collectors, and forgave prostitutes. And He told the religious folks who didn’t like it that they were further from the Kingdom of Heaven than His new friends. Those screwups and outcasts. That’s what it means to be gracious and to give. That is good news for us screwups. We get another chance. I do. Lucas does. The Good News is for everyone. It was time for me to get on board with grace.


Oh, and the man on the train? I saw him again. In a city of six million people, I saw the same stranger twice, on the same train, at the same time. He gave the same speech. “No tengo dedos. No puedo trabajar.” This time was different. I didn’t have snacks, so I gave him money and a note and told him Jesus loved him. He nodded and shuffled on.

Sarah Adrielle "Elle" Floyd is a senior English and Spanish major who graduates in May of 2020. After graduation, she plans to return to Spain to teach English, improve her Spanish, and continue learning grace.