I’m placing this story about Rick Steves–a man whom I as a veteran traveler has always admired–in my “Stories That Make you Go Wow!’ in a Good Way!” file.
The legendary TV travel guide has given a $4 million apartment complex to homeless women and kids who needed housing.
Writes Steves:
Before “Europe Through the Back Door,” my travels were “Europe Through the Gutter.” Slumming through Europe as a teenage backpacker, life for me was the daily challenge of finding an affordable (i.e., free) place to sleep. […]
I traveled in Central America, where I learned civil wars that I thought were between communists and capitalists were actually between obscenely rich oligarchs and landless peasants. I hung out with poor Christians who took the Biblical Jubilee Year (the notion that every fifty years the land is to be re-divided and debts are to be forgiven) seriously… even though rich Christians assumed God must have been kidding. [My italics for emphasis: Steves gets extra points from me for the God-talk.}
Back home, one of my pet social causes has long been affordable housing.
And so …
I urge you to read the whole story here, or at least watch the video.
It’s a good kind of “Wow!” story at a time when there are so many
“Wow!” stories of the other kind in the news.
Dear Paul, I had no idea Rick Steves (whom I, too, enjoy watching) was so committed a Christian. If only more individuals – especially the wealthy and the uber-rich (obscenely rich) – were willing to do with a little less, so all might enjoy a little more, Jesus might smile more! Especially in this era of the “Trump!”