Pain in the City

It has become more apparent to me how much pain and struggle there is in the city of Tucson. This is best illustrated by an experience I had while running an errand one afternoon about a week ago. There is a bike path behind our house that runs along the Santa Cruz River, which only has water in it when there is a storm. I was riding along this path to get into town and saw some police lights and an area that was taped off, which is not too unusual a site anywhere, so I thought nothing of it. On the way home the police and their tape were gone, but I saw a man in the same spot who had a woman by the hair. He was jerking her around and punching her. I rode by and then turned back a couple seconds later to call the cops, but they had started running off. There was a homeless man, who was extremely worked up, named Leo, sitting where I turned around on my bike that told me that the police from before were there because a man had been shot. Leo heard the gun shots and saw the victim laying on the ground groaning. I had some phone numbers for shelters in Tucson where Leo could stay the night back at the house, so I left to grab them and rode back to Leo, where we had a long conversation about what had happened and about his experiences that led to his homelessness. While we were talking a woman approached us and asked if either of us wanted to go behind the bushes and "mess around." When we weren't interested she turned and ran off. Our house has a car at the moment, until it gets sold, so I went back to the house and got Kirk to come with me in the car to give Leo a ride to the shelter. Leo was extremely grateful and kept saying that he knew that God had sent Kirk and I to help him out on that particular day; and maybe he was right. Maybe I was supposed to meet Leo. Getting him to a shelter for one night is such a tiny piece of what a person needs, but the experience has begun to shape my view of the problems and pain in Tucson in a much more profound way. Within thirty minutes I witnessed an abundance of suffering and brokenness on one street corner. I felt helpless in a way, because the only thing I could do was help one person in a miniscule way. Is there something about the way our system works that forces people into these horrible situations? It's necessary for me to remind myself constantly that it will take something much bigger than myself to serve this community and that I'm just as broken as these people, be it in much different ways.