The Shame I Felt When I Walked Into The Family Dollar With My Bags and The Attendant Called Me a Street Dweller - A Homelessness Story the Bible Warned Us About

My hands were raw from carrying them. Two overstuffed, splitting plastic bags that held everything I could call my own. The entry bell chimed, a sound meant to welcome shoppers, but for me, it was a trumpet of judgment. I needed aspirin. Just a small bottle, a tiny relief from the pounding in my head from another night sleeping on concrete.

Then I heard it. The attendant’s voice, loud enough for the line at the register to hear: “Make sure the street dweller doesn’t linger. Check the aisles.”

The air left my lungs. Street dweller. Not “customer.” Not “sir.” My face burned with a shame so profound I wanted to vanish. In that moment, I wasn’t a man with a name, a story, or a soul. I was a problem to be managed, a stereotype carrying bags. This experience of homelessness isn’t just about lacking a roof; it’s about the brutal stripping of your dignity, piece by piece, in places like a Family Dollar under fluorescent lights.

But what if I told you that the very scriptures we often ignore in our rush to judgment have a shocking, radical message about homelessness? This isn’t a modern social issue; it’s a ancient spiritual crisis, and the words of the Old Testament prophets and Jesus Christ himself condemn our indifference.

The Cry of the Prophetic: Old Testament Warnings on Homelessness

Long before social safety nets, the law of God was fiercely protective of the poor and the stranger. It was a direct command from heaven to earth.

“Do not oppress a foreigner; you yourselves know how it feels to be foreigners, because you were foreigners in Egypt.” (Exodus 23:9)

The Israelites were commanded to remember their own homelessness, their own state of being landless wanderers. This memory was meant to breed compassion, not contempt. The prophet Isaiah cries out with a voice that should shake our modern conscience:

“Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—when you see the naked, to clothe them, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?” (Isaiah 58:6-7)

God calls providing for the “poor wanderer”—the homeless—true worship. It’s not optional charity; it’s the fast He chooses. The Psalms echo the identity of God with the dispossessed:

“A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in his holy dwelling. God sets the lonely in families, he leads out the prisoners with singing; but the rebellious live in a sun-scorched land.” (Psalm 68:5-6)

When we refuse to see the “lonely” or the “street dweller,” we live in rebellion, in a spiritually sun-scorched land. This is the biblical view of homelessness.

The Scandal of Jesus: He Was Essentially Homeless

We forget this. We sanitize the nativity. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, entered this world in a borrowed space because there was “no room for them in the inn” (Luke 2:7). His first bed was a feed trough. His ministry was one of radical itinerancy.

“Jesus replied, ‘Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.’” (Luke 9:58)

He was, by definition, without a home. He depended on the kindness of others. He lived in solidarity with the displaced. And His teachings were unequivocal. The famous parable of the Sheep and the Goats draws the line of eternal destiny not on doctrine, but on practical compassion for those like the man in Family Dollar:

“Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’ … ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’” (Matthew 25:34-36, 40)

“I was a stranger.” The Greek word is xenos—foreigner, alien, one without a place. Jesus stunningly identifies Himself with the person we avoid, the person we label. When the attendant called me a “street dweller,” who was he really addressing in the spiritual realm, according to Jesus?

The Bags Are Not the Problem: The Heart Is

My shame in that store didn’t come from the bags. It came from the gaze that reduced me to them. It came from the violation of the greatest commandments, as Jesus affirmed from the Old Testament:

“‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” (Matthew 22:37-39, quoting Leviticus 19:18)

My neighbor in line looked away. The attendant saw a policy concern, not a neighbor. This is the heart of the homelessness crisis—a crisis of neighborly love. We’ve broken the second commandment, and in doing so, we break the first.

The walk out of that Family Dollar was longer than the walk in. The aspirin felt like a weight of condemnation. But I hold onto a truth deeper than my shame, a truth from the prophet Micah:

“He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” (Micah 6:8)

Justice for the homeless. Mercy for the street dweller. Humility to remember that but for the grace of God, the bags in your hands could be yours. Our cities are filled with modern-day Samaritans, left by the side of the road (Luke 10:30-37). The question remains: are we the religious elite who pass by, or are we the ones who stop, bind wounds, and provide shelter?

The next time you see someone with all their belongings in bags, remember: you are not looking at a “street dweller.” You are looking at a neighbor. You are looking at someone God fathers and defends. And, if you believe the words of Jesus, you may just be looking at the face of Christ Himself, waiting to see what you will do.