God Told Me to Come Home
By: Dr. Bruce Main, Executive Director of UrbanPromise

The crème colored couch had been sitting outside the new Student Center for two weeks—a beautiful new structure that houses our youth programs and alternative high school.

Some well intended donor had dropped off the couch after hours one day. But by the second day, the cushions had been taken by kids who wanted to do back flips in the parking lot. By the end of the first week, the Coke and Slurpee stains started to appear like small continents on the smooth cotton surface. Regardless of its appearance, the kids would park their behinds on the dirty couch while waiting for the program to begin. It was an eyesore.

I must admit I was getting a little irritated that nobody on the staff had taken the time to remove it. “How many times will they walk past before they do something?” I thought to myself. I just imagined a donor visiting and seeing this unattended piece of trash. So much for good impressions.

But the couch did not irritate me as much as the missing bus keys at 5am on Friday morning. I had volunteered to pick up 10 kids and their parents and take them to the airport. A camp in Colorado had donated a free week for our kids. SouthWest Airlines donated the tickets. I just had to get them all to the airport by 6:30am.

No bus keys!

Brent, our staff worker, was supposed to leave them in my mail box in the older building—our administrative hub on the other side of campus. But no keys were to be found.

So after rousing Brent’s supervisor from his sleep, I discovered that the only set of keys were on the other side of campus, in the new Student Center. Instead of jumping in the bus and heading off to the airport, I would need to break into the Student Center, disarm the alarm, and find the spare set of keys. I was already late for my pickups. This was only going to add to the morning drama.

I was not amused as I walked across the parking in the pitch dark.

I won’t tell you what I muttered to myself.

And then I saw the big ugly crème couch. It was too dark to see the stains, but seeing that eyesore still resting up against the brand new building irritated me even more.

“I guess I’ll have to move it myself,” I whined under my breath. Doesn’t it say in the Bible somewhere that Moses leaned on his “staff” and died?

Within a foot of the couch I noticed someone sleeping on it. Immediately a head popped up and startled me.

“Who’s that?” I asked, wondering who was more surprised. The person had obviously been sleeping. I, on the other hand, was not expecting to meet anyone at 5am in the parking lot.

I inched a little closer. It was a male wearing beige pants and a white t-shirt.

“Antwan.”

“Antwan, who?” I beckoned.

“Antwan Smith.”

The last time I had heard from Antwan Smith was ten years earlier. He had been locked up for drug dealing charges and I had lost track of him. But I had not forgotten Antwan. How could I? He was one of the boys in my memorable 6th grade class—a class of young boys who oozed with potential. Antwan had won our annual Martin Luther King Speech contest with a stirring rhetorical display. He had sung in our Gospel Choir, raked my leaves for spare change. He was just a good kid.

But then like so many young men in our city something happened. The drugs, the money, the prestige of being on the corner was just too alluring for a young man searching for identity.

Here he was. Pants wet with urine from an early morning discharge, curled up on a cushion-less couch. Homeless. What had his life had become? A 27 year old man without a job, without an education. Drifting.

I reached out my hand for his.

“Good to see you friend,” I chimed with a smile.

“Good to see you too,” he returned.

“Antwan,” I asked, feeling like I was caught in some kind of surreal moment of suspended time. You see, I am usually in bed at 5am. And had the keys been where they were supposed to be, I would have never seen Antwan. But there we were. Both ten years older. No fear between us. The seeds of friendship had been sown years before.

“Why did you come here?” I inquired.

Silence. The city eerily quiet.

“God told me I was supposed to come home.”

That was it. No big theological explanation. Just, “God told me I was supposed to come home.”

“Do you want to ride to airport with me?” I asked.

He nodded. And together we began our journey through the city streets to pick up eagerly waiting kids. As each child got on the bus, bagged packed, eyes wide open with expectation and hope I wondered what Antwan was thinking. Did he remember those days when I used to pick him up for trips to the Shore or the Amusement Park or for church Sunday morning? Was it painful for him to watch young people who still had hope, opportunity and choices?

After dropping the children and parents at the airport, we stopped for breakfast. We chatted for a couple of hours about the past ten years. And then I dropped him at the corner of Federal and Broadway so he could meet his parole officer.

I have not seen Antwan since. All I know is that for a brief moment Antwan came home. And because of an old couch and a set of forgotten keys, I was given the opportunity to welcome him.