In many people’s minds, Salt Spring Island is a beautiful and idyllic place, a kind of west coast paradise. To visitors and locals alike it is often seen as a place of retreat, rest, and renewal.
While the island is beautiful and reflects the creativity and wonder of God, it also has its challenges, brokenness, and struggles. Growing up here on the island and then coming back in my 30s after serving in missions for a number of years, I have seen how the island has changed in more ways than one.
One of the major changes that we have seen is a rapid and relatively large influx of the unhoused taking refuge in our little piece of paradise. Driving through town you will easily spot a dozen or more vehicles doubling as “homes”, or our harbour strewn with boats of varying degrees of seaworthiness, providing some level of shelter for those within.
It makes sense in some ways, to escape from the violence and intensity of the city and some relative sense of safety, but in doing so giving up access to resources that just are not available here. If I’m honest, our community as a whole has struggled with this change, seeing these folks as destroyers of paradise, rather than people in need of care and love.
As the church, many of whom have lived here for years, there is the same temptation to react in a way that seeks to preserve our comfortability rather than be the hands and feet of Jesus to those He has brought to our doorstep in need. While the problem is complex, we have started to reach out with pizza in the park on Sundays and are now shifting to soup as the weather starts to turn colder.
We are hopeful that as we respond in obedience and allow the Lord to challenge and soften our hearts, that He will pour out His hope and grace to those we minister to as well as give us more creative ways that we can be salt and light to this hurting community of people.