Sheltering the Homeless by D. T. SHIREMAN

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Tacoma Park Station, Washington, D.C. · Jan 2, 1908

Sheltering the Homeless

By D. T. SHIREMAN

SINCE starting our work here at Toluca, N. C., we have received many letters containing requests for homes for orphan children, and we find it impossible to take all for whom requests are made. We should be glad to send these letters to persons who would interest themselves in such needy ones. It makes us sad to have to say, “No, we can not take you to our home.” Doubtless the writer’s early experience helps him to sympathize with these needy cases, having been deprived of his parents from four years of age and becoming a homeless wanderer, having no place that he can look back to and call it home. Those who enjoy a home, with parents, brothers, and sisters, spending happy days in school, can not realize the condition of many of these homeless ones.

The Lord has given us instruction in Isaiah, making plain our duty toward these unfortunates, and setting forth some of the most precious promises in the whole Bible. We are not simply to live for ourselves, but for the good of our fellow beings also. “Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house? When thou seest the naked, that thou cover him; and that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh.” Isa. 58:7.

No one is excused from doing this kind of work. The writer of these lines could relate many interesting experiences in taking into his home the destitute, both old and young, sheltering them for months, the Lord sending the means to supply all our needs. Let us read the Lord’s promises to those who do such work: “Then shall thy light break forth as the morning, and thine health shall spring forth speedily: and thy righteousness shall go before thee, the glory of the Lord shall be thy reward. Then shalt thou call, and the Lord shall answer; thou shalt cry, and he shall say, Here I am.” Verse 8. What more could we ask? We read again: “If thou draw out thy soul to the hungry, and satisfy the afflicted soul; then shall thy light rise in obscurity, and thy darkness be as the noonday: and the Lord shall guide thee continually, and satisfy thy soul in drought, and make fat thy bones: and thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters fail not.”

Let us take the Lord at his word, and do the blessed work he has given us to do. Every soul saved through our instrumentality will cause us eternal rejoicing. Let us not faint in the service of the Lord. D. T. SHIREMAN.