i am now scared for what saturday might bring

I have had a string of Saturdays that are really, really abnormal. Last Saturday I was awakened by a phone call from the mechanic telling me that I need to spend another $400 to replace the brakes on the car that it is my possession. Then I fought off a bad mood as the rest of the day imploded in impatience and frustration from various things.

The Saturday before I went snowboarding at Nakiska; on the way home the car in my possession overheated and we had to get towed....but not after waiting an hour and a half in a frozen car with cars whizzing past on the very busy highway a mere foot away. No heat. The car completely died. I have a black toe... but it's actually from soccer a few days before, not from the cold. Unfortunately. It would make my story better. A story with a $768 price tag. It is not funny to me yet.

The Saturday before that was Floyd.

I was at work for nine and a half hours that day. Floyd sat passed out in a chair for one and a half of those. The security guard stared at him for 10 minutes of those. Anna and I wondered what to do for all of those.
The cops came. The ambulance came. They didn't do anything; they just kicked him out into the -30 degree winter night with nothing but a windbreaker and a ball cap and watched him walk away.
Floyd. The drunk man with black pants, a pink and yellow florescent/black jacket, glasses, a black cap with red on it, First Nations, 40 or 50 year old man. That was the description I gave to the police before they arrived. That is the description I saw while I was standing on the train platform ready to go home, watching my train come from across downtown.
I had a decision to make: miss my train and give him the muffin and scone I had in my backpack with my $1400 laptop, or pretend I didn't see him and go to my warm home and eat supper. I chose Floyd; I couldn't choose anything else. I had watched the city's authority figures walk away from this helpless man; I could not. I would not walk away.
I ran and caught up with him as he was stumbling across the road on a red light. Safe across I handed him the Good Earth bag of baking; all he said was "I'm cold. I want to go somewhere warm." My heart broke. His face was scabby from the cold, his bare hands were so frozen and fingers so stiff he could barely grab the bag I gave him.
I asked him if I could phone someone to help him. He wouldn't let me call the ambulance: "they're prejudiced," he said. And they are. I saw it earlier that day; I felt the weight of his words.
So I called a friend to come take Floyd somewhere where he could get help. Once we ungracefully got his drunk, stiff and cold body into the car we drove him to the drop-in center. "I'm a nobody," he slurred during a moment of silence. A nobody. What a sad state of the soul to actually believe you are nobody. I should have said more, besides that he is somebody, he has children, he is Floyd, he is somebody. I hope he remembers that. I hope he remembers the help he received.
Normally I don't do that kind of thing. But I felt absolutely no fear, just a deep compulsion to help this man, to feed him, to get him somewhere warm. I am not a good person; social justice just needed to be done. I was a doer, if only just for that day.

There are a lot of people society tries not to see. It's amazing how many people either drove or walked by Floyd and I, averted their eyes and completely avoided us altogether; nobody passing by even gave the slightest inclination that they perceived us in any way. I wonder what would have happened if I was actually in danger; I wonder if anybody would have even tried to help.

Why are we a society that refuses to see? Why is it that so many people refuse to help? Why is it that the justice system isn't in place to help those who really need it but to insulate from any intrusion those whose life is completely comfortable? Where will we be if we refuse to accept the Floyds, to help them in their broken place? What will be become if we continue to disown as people those who Christ died to save?