One of the things our entire church’s staff share in doing in the absence of a receptionist/church secretary is to pick up the phone when it rings. After lunch, as I updated the church’s facebook page to announce our Christmas Food Hampers Drive, the phone rang. I picked up it up and for about four or five seconds all I heard were children crying in the background. For moment I thought I answered a prank call, when suddenly a woman, with a discernible tone of reluctant shyness, asked, “Is it possible to ask your church for some food?” I asked again to confirm what I thought she said. “My apologies for the inconvenience, sir. But is it possible to ask your church for some food?” asked the woman. “I am a single mom. I’ve been out of a job for three months now and I have six children, my youngest is 17 months old. My kids are in desperate need of food, and some diapers. Can you help me, please?”
There I was, updating the church’s facebook page to inform the faith community about our Christmas food drive for needy families when someone calls the church asking help for some food. All of which happened just after having lunch at this new restaurant that served me a humongous burger that I didn’t even get to finish. This morning’s devotional reading for me, incidentally, was Matthew 25:31-46, where Jesus puts a face on the faceless and nameless needy. He says, “the hungry, the thirsty, the homeless– when you extend help to them, you’ve done it to me!” By identifying himself with the persons we pass by and/or ignore, Jesus asks a very simple one word question of our claim to love God, to follow him, to want to serve him faithfully: Really? When all is said and done it comes down to this: as you did it to one of these forgotten or overlooked, you did it to me.
In a city as affluent as Lloydminster to see a homeless person or receive a call from a family in dire need, is fairly uncommon. And so there is a tug within to see or hear about such. In bigger cities like Toronto, where I was recently, homelessness is so common, people can get jaded to such a reality. So I decided to walk around St James Park in downtown Toronto to see what I’d recently seen on the news about this group of people living in tents and cardboard boxes, dubbed “Occupy Toronto.” I sat on a park bench and met a young man who finished law and lost his job at the height of the economic downturn and was never able to recover. He had been living in his tent around Toronto for months now. He’d relied on churches’ soup kitchens and shelters since.
A picture I took of St James Park during OccupyToronto
But beyond my own backyard, around the world there are people and families that are in even deeper need– a matter of life and death kind of hunger. Unlike the situation in North America where there are jobs available for the taking for anyone who isn’t too picky and in many ways despite the economic downturn still experiences overabundance of food, the hungry of Africa and Asia have no way of finding jobs within their own countries and cities.
Such experiences must lead to thorough assessment of the content of our lives. We’re challenged to ask, “How have I lived? What have I done, not only for myself but for others?” We’re asked to take stock of our lives, of our commitments, of our priorities. It’s an invitation to join in God’s judgment of the world. Will you join with God and with your brothers and sisters and seek to make the world right? Will you seek to make the world whole? Will you be a part of the healing of the world?
When those questions are asked, what else is there to be said? Very little. But there’s much to be done.
(jlas.vieras)
