Eyes to See: Witnessing Christ in Unexpected Places

I attend a church that meets right in the heart of downtown Vancouver. It’s about a 40-minute bus ride from my place, and a good part of the route goes through Vancouver’s notorious Downtown Eastside, a neighborhood with disproportionately high levels of homelessness, drug use, and mental illness. When our bus drives through early Sunday mornings, the sidewalks are lined with makeshift tents from the night before. Men and women stumble across sidewalks. Broken crack pipes litter the pavement like autumn leaves. It’s a sight that sometimes feels better left unseen.

One rainy Sunday in late September, a thin, young figure trudged onto the bus with a bright red blanket wrapped around his shoulders. An older man stumbled on close behind him. The pair sat down across from me, their movements mimicking one another. After a few moments, I realized they were father and son.

I could smell the rain on them—not fresh rain, but the kind that must have soaked their clothes a day or two before, now carrying the smell of mold and rot. The older of the two had his arm slung around his son’s huddled shoulders, drawing him close. The boy’s body rose and fell with heavy breaths. Soft sniffles made their way from the cave he created around himself. The older man rocked the two slowly, whispering calm, quiet words. For a few moments, I glanced back and forth between them, trying to understand what it was about the smelly, rain-soaked men sitting across from me that felt familiar.

Then, quite suddenly, I caught a glimpse of Jesus within the man in front of me, his arm stretched out to embrace the young man next to him.

There was the image of Christ, reflected in God’s creation of man.

There was Jesus, comforting the brokenhearted.

Jesus, weeping with them, and me, and you.

I’ve prayed a good number of prayers asking God to grant me eyes to see God’s presence all around me. God has answered this prayer in some beautiful, incomprehensible ways, showing himself in sky-spanning sunrises and freshly freed butterflies. But the image of Christ, though fractured, is also reflected in those living in dirty tent cities and cardboard boxes under highways. Regretfully, I think it is often my fear of brokenness that stops me from seeing Jesus, as though he himself wasn’t broken and rejected. I turn my face from the cross before he has the chance to redeem it.

There used to be a tent city in the heart of my hometown’s downtown. It wasn’t a pretty sight; there is a deep ugliness that lingers amidst heartbreak, continual suffering, and ongoing trauma. Yet beneath the tarps and tents, there was a beauty I have seen in few other places. Our unhoused neighbors are walking, breathing reflections of Christ. They can have deep, unconditional love for one another and often express it audaciously. They mourn in the face of death and suffering, weeping just as Christ did 2,000 years ago.

Witnessing Christ in this way is heavy. It opens my eyes to things that are sometimes easier left unseen, leading to heartbreak that’s sometimes easier left unfelt. Yet I find myself praying for eyes to see regardless, eyes to recognize the image of Christ in men pushing shopping carts and women gripping tightly to cardboard signs, eyes to notice the image of Christ in every bus driver, university professor, and construction worker, in my classmates, teammates, and friends.

Christ in all the unexpected places.

In a manger, on a cross, and maybe even in smelly, rain-soaked men.