Extravagance

It is said that you can’t outgive God. Apparently you can’t outspend Him either. God spends our time, money and resources as if they were limitless. Cases in point:

When God took our dear Betty home, He gave no thought to the number of people it would take to fill her shoes.  When the coffee doesn’t get made and the flowers don’t show up on the altar on a Sunday morning, we say “I guess that must be something Betty used to do.”  Now people have to step out of their comfort zones to take over these jobs –it takes teams of people to do what Betty did. Wouldn’t it have been better if God had left Betty in good health so she could have kept on working for us? You have to wonder about God’s economy.

Can I help?

“Can I help?” the young man with the intense stare said. Usually one or two of the people who come to our food closet pull us aside and say they want to help. Some appoint themselves a task, sweeping the walkway after all the pet food has been given away or refreshing the snack trays we put out for those who wait for their number to be called so they can go collect their grocery bags.


The men want to go downstairs and do the heavy lifting – bag the groceries, load the bags into the cars. They want to feel useful. When we can we make room but more often we say, “We actually have so many volunteers that we had to send some home today.”

It’s a good thing that so many people in our community feel compassion for those who go hungry. We use our talents to organize and staff an enterprise that distributes food and a chance for people to visit with each other. We don’t make much room, though, for these folks to join us in useful work.

Sometimes they make suggestions on our process, and sometimes their suggestions are good ones.

The young man with the intense asks why we don’t recycle.

“We have no staff to deal with the bins.”

“Why don’t we let the guy who collects cans for money be responsible for taking away our recycled bottles and cans?”

There’s a good idea.

Work is a sacred activity. When people are deprived of work – by economic downturns or by personal circumstances that prevent them from holding a job, their spirits are as depleted as their empty stomachs.

“I thought about getting here early because I knew someone would need to shovel the snow away so people could get here,” the young man said. “But I had to wait for a ride. When I got here, it had already been done.”

Those of us who are blessed with health and brimming with ideas need to stand aside sometimes to make room for others. They will have ideas of their own, and different ways of doing things that we may not like. But we will all be blessed in the give and take.

Cabbie

Sunday, April 14, 1996, 6:30 am I finally make it to the passenger drop-off at Union Station in Chicago following the directions of a hotel doorman who pointed me down a one street going the wrong way. Street blockades protect recent road work with the inflexibility of the usherette protecting the stage door at the Royal George theater. To get here, I glued the front end of my rental car to the rear end of a purposefully driven cement truck, trusting the driver knew what he was doing. He did.
I drop off my sister who is heading East and tell her to ask the cab driver letting off a fare in front of me for directions to 90 West.
"As if he'll tell me, " she says.
But the cab driver bounces out of his cab over to my car window and in lilting English asks me for a piece of paper so he can write down directions for me. I hand him my Hertz rental agreement and he scribbles down street names, crosses them out, scribbles some more and then says,
"I have a better idea, just follow me."
We wind through the palisade in the street and twist and turn for an interminable time. I'm thinking,
"He forgot I'm following him. He's on his way to pick up another fare."
"He's leading me down to the river! They'll find my body floating past the Navy Pier before noon!"
Shaking off those thoughts, I consider,
"What a guy. This fellow is burning time and gas to help me, even though he knows there is no way I can pay him for the mileage he's running up on the meter."
Suddenly he leads me onto the freeway entrance and herds me over to the left, in the direction of O'Hare. I pass him and mouth a heartfelt "thank you!" He waves, veers right off the freeway and disappears.
Thank God for the cabbies in our lives, who take time to point us in the right direction.