A few weeks ago i wrote about going down to 16th street and ministering to a few people.
Today after skating with a friend, I was going down 16th street’s mall towards the Denver Skatepark and i ran into Marcus again. He is a cynical man in his 50’s who finds joy and purpose and hope in playing his guitar and singin his guts out to the passersby or even the security guards at the bank that he frequently peddles outside of.
Instantly my heart sunk when i saw his cardboard sign…
“Guitar Broken, need money to fix it Please HELP”
I sat with marcus for 45 minutes and talked with him. He didn’t know how the neck of his guitar had cracked and then broken off, but he did know that he could not play and earn money ALL DAY.
It always seems as though being forbidden or prohibited from doing something that you love gives you all the more reason to relish in it and sing, play, skate, speak, or work all the more passionately.
Marcus could not play today and when I got to him i told him to cry. Let it out. Not to bottle it up.
As over 100 people walked by without a second thought, he sobbed.
His Life is hard. Not hard as in “my ipod car radio transmitter got slammed in the door of my new car and now i can’t listen to my new CD on the way to meet my friends who all have money-Hard”
That’s all Marcus has. He has a dark past, a dirt poor present, and no hope of a future other than maybe a new song to sing tomorrow.
I handed him my ipod Shuffle
(not my big ipod, just the one i use when I’m skating…how rich i am…)
-handed him the headphones and he listened to a few acoustic songs by Thrice and Jars of Clay, and then I remembered that he used to go to church in the 90’s so i skipped ahead to Hillsong’s “Awesome God”
Tears in his eyes, not knowing what to do with his hands, Marcus started to rock his noggin and lift his hands in praise to the God that he felt had abandoned him that morning. He started singing and didn’t even realize or care that some people walking by were getting a full volume/half drunk version of an outdated Christian song. He found an escape that brought him to remember who’s hands he was in.
He listened to it over again and shook my hand as he said for the sixth time in an hour, “What’s your name? I’m Marcus. Oh, Evan? Thanks brother.”
