Buttons

When I was going into my senior year of high school I used to go down to Detroit with my sister Priscilla. She was always active with the Southern Baptist Convention in Michigan and at that time she was working with needy people in the Cass Corridor of Detroit down by the Masonic Theater. She talked me into coming down to help her from time to time.

She stayed in a women’s home called Priscilla Hall, (seems appropriate) a place for troubled women to go and get the help they needed. Spiritual and physical, a place to go to heal the soul and body. Priscilla always has had a heart for helping others. She never looked down on these people just ministered to their needs.

Night after night my sister would be their helping those people who had no one else to turn to. The Cass Corridor was the roughest place you could find in Detroit. Drunks and alcoholics, drug addicts and prostitutes, received love and compassion from some one they had never known before. She always left them with the knowledge that Jesus loves them and had a plan for their lives. Some would get saved others would not but none left not knowing that they were loved by a savior and my sister.

I mention Buttons, (in the tag) because he was my first experience with one of Cillas street people. He also hung out around the corridor. Across the street from Priscilla Hall was the Baptist center. Buttons was a regular their who slept out in the park in front of the Masonic Theater. His coat had a hundred buttons pinned all over it. He was a pleasant old man with a very sad life. He was an alcoholic. When he was sober he professed Jesus as savior. I talked to him about it every time I saw him hoping that the salvation plan would grab him and change his life.

I grew closer to him as I am sure Cilla did to her charges. I went down several weekends the summer of 1970 before my senior year. My friends thought I was foolish going down their on the weekends. To a place so scary, were you could get stabbed as you walked down the streets helping the homeless people living in the area. Much of this was done at night when you would be most venerable.

The last time I went down was the weekend that I found out Buttons was dead. I do not know how he died but being a street person it was inevitable. I was crushed when I found out he was dead. Maybe a little disillusioned that the time I had spent ended up not being enough to keep Buttons from dieing. I never went back.

I lost sight of what was important. That introducing Jesus to the homeless gave them an opportunity to go to heaven and have a new life. It was not about me it was about them. “Go ye therefore” present the gospel to those who needed it. Priscilla never lost sight of the mission. To this day she has not lost sight of what we are called to do.