Street people with their bags and their hopelessness can sometimes overwhelm us with pity. At other times maybe we just dread what their pictures say about society or about our own feelings of helplessness.

The British newspaper The Daily Telegraph featured an interview with a woman who lived rough on the streets for thirty-two years. ^{The Daily Telegraph, January 13, 1995 .} She suffered indignity, substance abuse, violence, and sexual abuse. Seven years ago she started slowly but surely to put all that behind her. She has since gone on to obtain a degree in English literature and women's studies from a London university and is currently preparing to earn her master's degree.

A turning point for this woman was when two particularly degrading experiences led her to pray, although up until then she hadn't considered herself religious. She felt the answer to her prayer came as a willingness to go to a treatment center for drug and alcohol abuse. Step by step—and with some backward steps along the way—she pulled herself up by the bootstraps. She now looks forward to helping others out of the position in which she found herself.

Thinking of this experience might prompt us to ask ourselves what kind of expectancy we hold in our hearts for those people we see in the same sort of condition she was once in. Are we resigning them to the lives defined by the way they look? Or are we willing to see a potential scholar or some other prospective contributor to society beyond the impact-making facade? Are we ready and willing to dig deeper into our hearts and discern a child of God deserving of His love at the back of even the most severe picture of hopelessness?

Our prayers can contribute to healing by bearing witness to the Bible truth that "in him [God] we live, and move, and have our being" (Acts 17:28). This truth applies to everyone. Affirming it faithfully may lead us to take specific steps to help an individual or a charitable group, or it may lead us to still more diligent prayer.

The most vital part we are able to play is to identify the true, spiritual nature of man. This prayer can support the inherent ability of an individual to rouse himself or herself from the limiting beliefs of material existence. It is within the framework of this lie of materiality that the illusions of substance abuse, degradation, vulnerability, and isolation find their home. And without a home for these lies about man, there is ultimately no home for the lie of man's lost dignity. We can contribute support in this way as we ourselves are willing to be raised by Christ above all merely material views of our environment.

The truth of man's unsoiled relation to God as His child was demonstrated by Christ Jesus in the healing of insanity, sickness, sin, and all lack. The Christ is the message of man's sonship with God, which is always passing from the divine Mind to each and every one of us. As we listen for the call of the Christ in our own lives, we are proving a presence already there for everyone—a presence that is calling to shepherd each to his or her rightful place, both mentally and practically. This Christ call restores dignity and peace to individuals in proportion as it is recognized, acknowledged, and obeyed.

I remember one night when I was trying to read something that I considered of some importance. I couldn't concentrate because someone outside was making a lot of noise. I wished that person would go away so I could get on with my "important" reading. A little later I began to think a bit less selfishly. I began to wish the person would go away for the sake of the neighbors, who I realized must be feeling very disturbed by the commotion. More and more clearly the thought came to me that I ought to take a look, but I refused to accept the call to do this. I figured morbid curiosity rather than inspiration was behind this desire. After about two hours of ignoring the compulsion to take a look, I finally did so.

It was a cold winter's night. I saw a woman banging on the door and rattling the windows of the house across the street from mine, shouting in abusive language. It didn't surprise me to see that, because that's exactly what I had been hearing! Yet confronting the situation visually changed my outlook from self-concerned anger to deep, deep compassion. I was no longer troubled for myself or for the peace of the neighborhood. I was suddenly over-taken by the thought that this dear individual shouldn't be kept from her rightful place. Wherever that rightful place was, it was not out there in the cold, attracting the anger of the neighborhood. I could see—prayerfully discern—that God wasn't telling her to be out there, but was communicating to her the knowledge of where she belonged at that moment.

No sooner had my thought changed from self-concern to compassion than the banging and shouting suddenly ceased. The individual looked thoughtful for half a minute, then turned and left. She walked away as if she knew exactly where it was right for her to be.

None of God's children deserve to be left out in the cold—either literally or by being cold-shouldered by our thoughts of them. Those who are really down may find it a long, hard struggle to regain totally their dignity and conscious self-worth. All of us, though, do inherently have the ability to achieve this self-restoration under God's guiding hand.

The truth about indignity is that there is no divine support for it. It is only an aspect of what Jesus called "a liar, and the father of it" (John 8:44)—the whole belief of life in matter, which God neither creates nor sanctions, and of which He is not even aware. The true man—sustained eternally in God's image and likeness—is forever at home in the consciousness of heavenly harmony. Spiritual dignity is the real status of all of us as expressions of divine Soul, and, in truth, the absence of this divine quality is impossible.

Our prayers can help others see this. They can help our fellow men and women lift themselves from illusions of indignity to the recognition and demonstration of the divine dignity of true manhood and womanhood. So it's got to be worth our praying!

For any of us to do less is to take a step away from our own dignity as the children of God. We are divinely designed to keep our consciousness filled with the true view of man as God's highest creation. Doing this consistently is rising to the status of the dignity of God's man.