Mr. Thompson is a retired school teacher, a Christian with past work with the Prison Ministry. He possesses a M.S in Psychology and is dedicated to the Lord.
Jacksonville, Florida
View all posts by T. F. Thompson
Published
5 thoughts on “The homeless sleeping on pews in a San Francisco church via /r/pics”
I will let Tom answer for himself, but I will say this much for the picture – I did not find a backstory for it as far as San Francisco is concerned. I wish I could. And I will bet that if we got the FULL story behind it, we would find something to gripe about, almost certainly – even if the scene is generally what it appears to be.
BUT…
But a picture is worth a thousand words.
AND…
And there is another backstory – far older.
What is not in doubt is that people are taking refuge in a church building. THAT, as I say, is a good START.
It’s not the Hilton. It’s not the guest room at some fine Christian home. But the picture in and of itself says a church cares for the stranger – the least of these!
I recall Jesus lamenting over Jerusalem saying… How I longed to gather you like chicks under my wing.
This is a picture of what THAT looks like.
Even if it turns out to be a staged, computer graphic pic… it dares to portray a church acting like Jesus.
And it’s too late to take that away even if the backstory were to boil up later and detract from it. The picture already breaks open the imagination. God is doing something here. And my suspicious side cannot take that away from him.
It doesn’t matter if the picture is real or not. It is the epitome of what the church should be doing as an example. A picture of Jesus is not a real picture of Him, but it inspires and gives us a focus point on Him in the flesh as a person for today. The same should be true for this photo as the image should also be duplicated over and over again across church around America. At that point, we can see this is just another photo of Jesus and we are back in focus once again as we can see the reality of the kingdom of God for ourselves and for the rest of the world.
As you say “… we can see this is just another photo of Jesus …”.
This is that sense in which sometimes my language comes off sounding like the building is the church. I know the difference, but that church building still symbolically represents the church in powerful ways. Here we have a picture of homeless people sleeping in a church building – yet symbolically it is “just another photo of Jesus”.
And I am mindful that it could have been a painting instead. That would be almost the same power. However, the photo strongly suggests that this really did happen in space/time and that what we see is what we get. So, it is even that more powerful on that front.
Hard Times Ministries 
Now THAT’s a start!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Do you have any back-story on this? My happy and suspicious sides are warring inside me, and I want to quiet them with info.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I will let Tom answer for himself, but I will say this much for the picture – I did not find a backstory for it as far as San Francisco is concerned. I wish I could. And I will bet that if we got the FULL story behind it, we would find something to gripe about, almost certainly – even if the scene is generally what it appears to be.
BUT…
But a picture is worth a thousand words.
AND…
And there is another backstory – far older.
What is not in doubt is that people are taking refuge in a church building. THAT, as I say, is a good START.
It’s not the Hilton. It’s not the guest room at some fine Christian home. But the picture in and of itself says a church cares for the stranger – the least of these!
I recall Jesus lamenting over Jerusalem saying… How I longed to gather you like chicks under my wing.
This is a picture of what THAT looks like.
Even if it turns out to be a staged, computer graphic pic… it dares to portray a church acting like Jesus.
And it’s too late to take that away even if the backstory were to boil up later and detract from it. The picture already breaks open the imagination. God is doing something here. And my suspicious side cannot take that away from him.
LikeLiked by 2 people
It doesn’t matter if the picture is real or not. It is the epitome of what the church should be doing as an example. A picture of Jesus is not a real picture of Him, but it inspires and gives us a focus point on Him in the flesh as a person for today. The same should be true for this photo as the image should also be duplicated over and over again across church around America. At that point, we can see this is just another photo of Jesus and we are back in focus once again as we can see the reality of the kingdom of God for ourselves and for the rest of the world.
LikeLiked by 1 person
As you say “… we can see this is just another photo of Jesus …”.
This is that sense in which sometimes my language comes off sounding like the building is the church. I know the difference, but that church building still symbolically represents the church in powerful ways. Here we have a picture of homeless people sleeping in a church building – yet symbolically it is “just another photo of Jesus”.
And I am mindful that it could have been a painting instead. That would be almost the same power. However, the photo strongly suggests that this really did happen in space/time and that what we see is what we get. So, it is even that more powerful on that front.
LikeLiked by 1 person