“I believe that one of the highest calls of the Christian, is to intentionally seek out new friendships. In my community there are over 200 people that for whatever reason have lost their familial and friend support system entirely, to the point of homelessness. They each need a new support system to encourage them, to weep with, to share life with. I believe that if we will make friends with people then everything else falls into place. We won’t let our friends make bad choices. We won’t let our friends freeze to death. We will do everything we know to do to bring our friends out of desparate situations and into peace and joy and contentment. And we won’t let our friends miss the true meaning of the Gospel of Jesus!” -Jason Bennett

This is my friend Jason, and you may have read the post I wrote about him and his family this past July. I was really hesitant to post this shot of him at first, even though I love it. Why? Because I don’t feel that it is a good portrait of who he is, but it is exactly what I was looking to get when I shot it. And I believe there is a message behind how he looks in it, and what he is all about that serves a greater good.

I deliberately processed this to be very dark in nature, and brought out very subtle shifts in his skin tone to actually accentuate them – knowing it would give it more impact  due to the intense look he has going on. He looks like somebody that you wouldn’t want to mess with. Or, more specifically,  maybe even do your best to avoid if you ran into him on the street as a homeless person. No, he’s not smiling at all. But, do homeless people really have that much to smile about? Especially when they’re having to figure out how to survive outside in temperatures that are below zero? No they don’t.

Well, Jason isn’t homeless. But he is going out and doing his best to give homeless people in the Murfreesboro, TN area a reason to smile.  Simply by offering his friendship, and doing what his God has asked of him to do:  “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

Jason makes it a point to get out and befriend homeless people in his community – earning their trust in the process.  As I spoke with him the other night he told me about how some people become what they call “unshelterable.” These are the people can’t be admitted to shelters because they have a drinking problem or drug issues. They get turned away due to shelter policy. Well, that may not be such a bad thing on nights when the temperatures aren’t so extreme. But for the past couple of weeks temps in the Nashville area have dipped to the point that some of them have been dying from it. They’re freezing to death because they have no place to go. They can’t go to the businesses that normally will offer them a place to warm up for a bit because those businesses themselves have been closed. Why have they been closed? The extreme cold temperatures that have been accompanied by ice storms.

So,  Jason has been getting out and doing whatever he can to help these people. Rather than just preaching The Gospel, he’s out living it. He’s doing it. And more of us need to be making an effort to as well, which brings me back around to my point about this photo and story serving a greater good.  He looks pretty rough in this shot, and not like the type person I believe a lot of people would be too eager to reach out to and help if they saw him on the street needing it. But, think about what I just told you he is doing for those that look a lot rougher than he does here. Read between the lines of it all.

Don’t judge a book by its cover, y’all.