{"id":347,"date":"2011-01-07T19:35:44","date_gmt":"2011-01-07T19:35:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.brianmashburn.net\/?p=347"},"modified":"2011-01-07T19:35:44","modified_gmt":"2011-01-07T19:35:44","slug":"the-man-in-the-yellow-raincoat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.brianmashburn.net\/?p=347","title":{"rendered":"The Man in the Yellow Raincoat"},"content":{"rendered":"

Note: This is a piece written by my old college roommate Robert San Juan. May everyone have compassion.<\/strong> <\/p>\n

So I was on the train going to work this morning and I was sitting behind this gentleman in a yellow raincoat. I wouldn\u2019t say he was one of the many homeless that jump on the train to keep warm, but I will say he looked down on his luck. <\/p>\n

He looked to be over 60, with glasses, a moustache and a dirty baseball cap. He was filling out a work application for some random burger joint that I had never heard of. In the space that was labeled \u201cWhere did you hear about us?\u201d he wrote \u201ccraigslist\u201d and dotted the \u201cI\u201d with a hollow circle. <\/p>\n

Out of his worn bag he then pulled out 3 worn pieces of notebook paper. Those three pieces of paper were entirely covered in the same tiny handwritten scrawl, the i\u2019s all dotted with circles. There was not an empty space left anywhere on the pages. There was writing cross-ways, up the sides, running horizontally and vertically. It looked like a prop from the movie \u201cA Beautiful Mind\u201d\u2026 and my first reaction to those pages was \u201coh no\u2026 I bet he\u2019s crazy\u201d. There were barely any spaces between the words making the handwriting almost illegible. ALMOST illegible. <\/p>\n

As we rode the train together, he pulled the pages closer to his face so he could read them better, and in effect pulling it closer to me (And yes I did ashamedly invade his privacy by reading over his shoulder). As I studied the pages along with him I realized that every single \u201centry\u201d on the page was information about jobs\u2026 managerial contacts\u2026 phone numbers\u2026 addresses\u2026 websites\u2026 URLs\u2026 he was really\u2026 REALLY looking for a job\u2026 somewhere, he had been lucky enough to gain access to a computer and had hand written all of this information on these three pieces of paper in his search for a job\u2026 <\/p>\n

I found myself feeling severely ashamed that I had so quickly judged him\u2026 I felt angry that this man, that so badly wanted a job and wanted to work, did not have one\u2026 and I felt sad that I did not have a job to offer him\u2026 I wanted to ask him what sort of job he was looking for, thinking I might be able to help him\u2026 but was conflicted in that I would have to admit that I had been snooping over his shoulder, or that I might offend his pride in doing so. Before I could make up my lazy, self centered mind, he was up and off the train before I realized it. <\/p>\n

So all I have for him now, this man in the yellow raincoat, is prayer. I\u2019m praying for him. Praying that he was getting off the train for a job interview and will be employed very soon\u2026 I also have my ability to request prayers for him on his behalf, from those that are believers in prayer\u2026 so please pray for him, and all those like him that are searching so hard to provide for themselves and those that they love. <\/p>\n

To the man in the yellow raincoat\u2026 thank you. Thank you for putting a little more perspective to my day. And I hope you are blessed with more than what you were ever looking for.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Note: This is a piece written by my old college roommate Robert San Juan. May everyone have compassion. So I was on the train going to work this morning and I was sitting behind this gentleman in a yellow raincoat. I wouldn\u2019t say he was one of the many homeless that jump on the train […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12,14,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christs-mission","category-compassion","category-prayer"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pO6nf-5B","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brianmashburn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brianmashburn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brianmashburn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brianmashburn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brianmashburn.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=347"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.brianmashburn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brianmashburn.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brianmashburn.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brianmashburn.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}