Some things that occurred to me during Thanksgiving week, and things that happened to happen, as things do, that had me thinking about ordinary things in a new way.<\/p>\n
I called the local homeless shelter in nearby Flint \u2013 as close to a soup kitchen as we can have these days; run by a ministry, like an old-fashioned revival mission \u2013 to ask if they needed a volunteer to serve, prep meals, or clean up on Thanksgiving. \u201cNo thanks,\u201d a man said with a chuckle. \u201cIf you want to come by and help\u2026 it would be to help eat all the food we\u2019re going to have.\u201d<\/p>\n
He explained that volunteers often are needed at many times during the year (duly noted) but on Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter, they have more offers of volunteer help than they can accommodate. \u201cI\u2019m sorry.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said he was sorry. A turn of phrase, but I know what was behind that. \u201cThere is a season, turn, turn,\u201d goes the famous passage from Ecclesiastes, Chapter 3.<\/p>\n
In King Solomon\u2019s words, or the folk song based on them, it does not say that there is a time to pity\u2026 although we know that we should have charitable impulses. It does not say that there is a time to \u201cignore,\u201d of course: when things come our way but do not \u201cgo\u201d our way, that is when it is our time to address them. That is what\u2019s called Life. In Biblical perspective, lives well lived.<\/p>\n
If we serve the poor, we should do so not out of pity, but out of love.<\/p>\n
If (like my friend Becky Spencer and her Grand Staff Swaziland outreaches) (I will call friends I admire to my mind here) we work in overseas missions, it is not because it is easy or glamorous, but because it is right.<\/p>\n
If spouses, children, or parents care for sick family members, the world might remark about burdens, but we know \u2013 only as we can<\/em> know \u2013 that somehow such service is a blessing, not a burden.<\/p>\n My sister had a daughter with severe cerebral palsy, cared for her, and went through very hard times before losing Liza\u2026 but says she never could know the depth or precious quality of love except for the \u201ccrisis.\u201d<\/p>\n My wife endured diabetes, heart attacks, kidney failure, strokes, cancer, amputations, and heart and kidney transplants\u2026 but never felt sorry for herself. She said till the end that she would not choose to go through it all again, but would not change it for the world. From the increased faith and reliance on God, she asked how she could be sorry for that?<\/p>\n Jesus, on the cross, was not sorry for Himself, but for the thieves on the crosses to the left and right. And He even forgave those who persecuted Him and hung Him out to die \u2013 for \u201cthey knew not what they did.\u201d<\/p>\n The singer Bradley Walker, whose muscular dystrophy has consigned him to a wheelchair all his life, does not complain but asks sympathy rather for the family of his songwriting partner Tim Johnson who died at a young age. And the singer Rory Feek who lost his wife Joey, after she gave birth to their Down Syndrome daughter Indie \u2013 neither Joey nor Rory nor anyone who knows them feels sorry for them.<\/p>\n \u201cSorry.\u201d It is a strange concept, stranger the more we contemplate. When we say we feel sorry for someone, it is really a form of sanitary self-pity? We will miss them, for instance?<\/p>\n It has been said \u2013 and it is a good lesson in perspective \u2013 that we are more fortunate than the angels. How? We can almost feel sorry for them, because as sinners seeking forgiveness, accepting Christ, and knowing the glory of salvation \u2013 we can sing, and angels simply cannot sing, \u201cAmazing Grace, how sweet the sound That saved a wretch like me!\u201d In a way, I feel sorry for them. \u201cI once was lost, but now I\u2019m found!\u201d<\/p>\n So let us go forth \u2013 yes, on days that are not Thanksgiving or Christmas or Easter \u2013 and serve others and serve God, not out of obligation or pity or sorrow (the root-word of \u201csorry\u201d) but out of a willing heart, love, and joy.<\/p>\n + + +<\/p>\n