We did it again. Even
though we promised we wouldn’t, we did.
Awakened from a post-marathon, post- church, Vikings game
nap by an urgent ringing of the doorbell, I jumped to my feet and answered it,
still catching up to my heartbeat and hoping that the cramp in my foot would
not cause me to stumble, I opened the door to a dirty man who barely said hello
before launching into his sales-pitch.
“I’m from ___ and we just did your neighbor’s ___. Would you like yours done?”
At this point I deferred to my husband, still dazed and
unable to know whether or not this was a good idea. Amazingly able to move after running 26.2
miles, he went out the door with the man to discuss the project and the
cost. After agreeing (we said we
wouldn’t do this anymore!) with a price, the men set to work.
Their equipment, their vehicle, their bodies were broken,
dirty and seemed to lack in general maintenance. Requiring a jump for their vehicle, they
struggled to get engines working. After
a while there was another ring of the bell and the question, “Can the little
boy use your bathroom?” Of course he
could. But, I thought, “There’s a little
boy out there?” These two men were also
responsible for this four year old boy, who desperately wanted to be in the
house with us. So we let him.
The boy told me about his action figure, discussed the movie
(Big Hero 6) it came from, told me of his favorite super heroes and knew Marvel
and Disney. He talked; he played with
some toys and was generally a lovely child who lived a different life than we
do.
Outside, equipment broke down and the men struggled to
finish the job. At one point they told
my husband it may take more material than originally quoted and we thought they
would talk to us about that, considering they would change the cost
appropriately.
When they came to be paid, they called to the boy, told my
husband that they used three times the material and would now charge us three
times the cost. They wanted cash. Of course.
All of those negotiations happened without my
knowledge. A drive to the ATM, and the
men were paid. The work may or may not
be complete. An agreement that they
would come back today to “touch up” was struck.
When my husband told me how the story ended, he had that
look on his face that he gets when he has been duped or lied to and he cannot find
a good way out of the situation. He was
angry that he was lied to and that, yet again, he fell for what may or may not
be considered a swindle. And he repeated
his mantra, “Never again.”
But then he said something that was more important than the
situation. He said, “These people have
so much less than we do. It’s only money. They need it more right now, and we had some
we could give.”
Wow. I had to
agree. Their truck was in terrible
shape. Their generator wasn’t working
well. They were out, on a Sunday
afternoon, trying to make some money for what?
To feed the boy? To feed a
house-full or two of hungry people? To
buy a clean shirt?
Sure, we don’t like being lied to, but these men worked for
their pay, albeit double (they compromised) what was quoted. They didn’t explain their need, or bemoan
their situation. They knocked on our
door and asked for work, and it was a project we needed completed.
It made me think about the sermon I heard that morning. The church I attended kicked off their annual
stewardship drive with a theme of JOY.
(Abundant…Joy…Overflowing...Generosity…from 2 Cor. 8:1-7). The priest spoke about giving. She opened with a personal story of receiving
four Twins tickets when she needed only two and then finding two people in the
crowd to give the extra tickets to. The
couple who received the tickets, she learned, has a child in Mayo with
cancer. The child loves baseball and
though he could not come to the game, his parents were bringing nearly every souvenir
they could afford back to the hospital for their son.
She talked about the recent study that identified that
individuals who give receive more than the person who receives. She called that the “joy of giving.” We were asked to think of a time when we
bought a gift for someone that made us so excited that we could barely contain
ourselves. She called that the “intimacy
of giving.” She said that when we give,
we “draw closer to one another in the spirit of giving.”
During the education hour, the finance person gave an
illustration of what tithing means. To tithe
means you give 10% of your income. He
had ten potatoes on a table. He removed
one potato from the line and said this one potato isn’t all that much. There are still nine potatoes to supply our
needs. He challenged those in attendance
to increase their previous year’s pledge by 10%. Over the course of time, a family could
conceivably give 10% of their income. He
did not say that all 10% needed to go to the church, and I believe that giving
10% can be divided up amongst many places and faces in need. But the image of the potatoes, the humble,
abundant potato, made sense to me.
Yesterday we gave a couple of men and a small boy a small handful
of French fries.
Here is the prayer that was given as a book mark to everyone
in attendance at the education hour yesterday.
Disturb us, Lord, when
we are too pleased with ourselves, when our dreams have come true because we
dream too little, when we have arrived safely because we sailed too close to
the shore.
Disturb us, Lord, when
with the abundance of the things we possess we have lost our thirst for the
water of life.
Stir us, Lord to dare
more boldly, to venture on the wider seas where storms will show your mastery,
where in losing sight of the land we shall find the stars.
We ask you to push
back the horizons of our hope, and to push us into the future in strength,
courage, love and hope.
Amen.