I need to tell you about my Navigator colleague Heidi Gleghorn, a veritable hero in working with the poor. Here’s what the official site for Navigator I-58 Ministries says about her:

Heidi was homeless until junior high, and her (still homeless) father passed away in 2021 from a drug overdose. Before serving with I-58, Heidi was already working with the homeless because of her upbringing. Now she’s a part of a team! She is currently working with a few different local homeless ministries where she’s made a book of over 200 homeless pictures, names and prayer requests. Heidi also meets with others for about 20 hours per week via Inner Healing. The discipleship she does these days starts with one’s brokenness, and she is the Colorado Springs point of contact for I:58…[She and her husband] have two adopted children, one son of 23 who is now married, and one daughter who just started college.

“Homeless until junior high…” doesn’t begin to tell the story. Most of us  read about hippies, and we saw pictures of tricked out VW buses. Heidi  actually grew up in one on the beaches of Northern California. Her parents  were genuine hippies – ‘homeless’ before homeless was a  thing. Here she is with her father, a few years before his death in 2021 and with her husband, Rob.

Heidi writes:

My life verse Isa 58:10 and 11: If you spend yourself on behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, your light will rise in the darkness, your night will be like the noon day, and the Lord will guide you always and He will strengthen you. – The name of The Navigators “I-58 Ministries” comes from this verse

I was in a Zoom(R) meeting with a number of folks last week, including Heidi, and she offered a response to someone’s comment about how we might need to take a stand on the LGBT… issue. She said something like this:

John the Baptist took a stand on Herod’s taking the wrong wife, and it cost him his head. Meanwhile Jesus was doing his ministry of showing the love of God.

She went on to talk about one of the local Colorado Springs’ ministries to the poor, a ministry I have done some work with over the years. She reeled off a list of four or five conditions that ministry does not accept (e.g., mental illness), and she encouraged us to reach out to all those in need. It was the most moving moment (for me) in that 75-minute meeting.

You can see her 36-minute story here. The story includes a picture of the van, but, unfortunately, it doesn’t appear in the video.

And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. And as was his custom, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and he stood up to read. And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” (Luke 4.16 – 19, ESV)

If you pour yourself out for the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then shall your light rise in the darkness and your gloom be as the noonday. And the LORD will guide you continually and satisfy your desire in scorched places and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters do not fail. (Isaiah 58.10, 11, ESV)