I took the time to do a retrospective of our work this Fall. I just looked at our work at Orange Grove (Gulfport) where we work on homes from Pascagoula to Pass Christian, MS. This fall we housed and utilized about 216 volunteers over seven weeks.
I tally that we have completed construction work on thirteen homes and taken a large step on two others. Thirteen families are now in homes where there is no longer worry over leaking roofs, rotting floors or window frames. They have homes where small children now sleep in "civilized" conditions, they actually have a bedroom with beds and can bathe in a shower or tub in a functioning bathroom. FEMA has been called to collect trailers, the sign of a completed job.
All this just in the eastern part of Mississippi. We have had churches from Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, and Arkansas, among others. We are so grateful. Thank you all.
I must also mention in this eastern area of Mississippi that we have an unabated flow of families and individuals who are in dire need of help as a result of damage from Katrina.
We still need your help. We have a home where there is a father with two pre-school and elementary school-aged children that a still living in a trailer while their home stands unlivable. We have the home of an elderly couple that I am desperate to get into their home by Christmas, but I have no volunteers. I may spend much of the early weeks of December hanging drywall with one of my work-site managers.
Would you consider a great Christmas gift, to forgo the chestnuts by the fire, sipped spiced cider and the gaiety of a decorated fir with wrapped presents underneath to come to Orange Grove or Pearlington in December and help us give someone a true Christmas present, the gift of love? Why can't we double that accomplishment of thirteen homes?
We have plenty of room for volunteers between now and March.
I'll try to get you a summary of our work in Pearlington in the next few days.
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Monday, November 10, 2008
Day 226 - Dilemma
Well, the last few days have been a mixed bag.
First, one of the more unbelievable Presidential elections transpired six days ago. One that will most probably transform this country if we can do it before sliding back into that old cynicism that you can’t change the system.
Then, I had to use my four wheel drive twice already to get out of a ditch (in a truck whose manufacturer I do not prefer over my brother’s Dodge RAM).
Then, dear friends who have been with PDA as long as me departed for new beginnings (not a bad thing I keep telling myself).
Then, tumultuous challenges for staffing surge as strongly as ever.
Then, the imperative to aid those widows, homeless and poor sounds as fresh today as it did two millennia ago. A tragic circumstance with a homeowner repeats the past. What a week.
Here it is:
My friend Heather (see her blog: http://seektheking-pda.blogspot.com/) has been the village manager at Pearlington since last spring. She finally decided to follow the decision of Jeremy, also a good friend and who was the work site manager, to move on to the mission of the Lagniappe Presbyterian Church in Waveland.
It’s a really strong church with a committed construction effort similar to PDA’s. The members I’ve met are very gracious, have offered equipment and labor to pull our Pearlington pods out of the swamp after Gustav and Ike washed them into it. Theirs is a PCA church, but our collaborative effort shows thus far dogma can often just be a drag on friendship and fellowship when we are following a Call.
It really hurts to see Heather go, she has been one of our best managers and has a heart in the right place; the kind of person I call a “keeper.” I know her choice was hard and she struggled not only with this decision, but the greater decision of “what am I going to do next?” I’ll posit that she will find herself in seminary sooner or later.
In her next to last post she wondered, “I have sometimes joked that I wish God would post a big neon sign for me, to communicate His will.” I can only say Heather, walk the road and you’ll find the way. Or, as someone said, “If you are going to walk on water, you’ve got to get out of the boat.”
Stay close Heather, we all miss you.
Today I relived essentially a previous experience. (If you are reading these posts, you will know which one.) This repetition is an inexcusable one that on one hand makes me mad that some power repeated it and on the other makes me sad that we as a people have allowed it.
The e-mail from the case worker said simply, “Henry will you check on this case? This woman is really fearful about winter. She has no heat and has holes in her floor.”
By now, you know that I did.
I drove the twenty minutes or so to get to her home. It is out westward on I-10 towards Bay Saint Louis, not quite there, but close. I took an exit south and followed a winding road that my Google Map described, took the next turn and wandered a mile or so down a narrow road until I saw the house number on the mail box on the roadside.
There stood another mobile home, smaller, but clearly of a 1980’s vintage like the one I found in the north county a few months back. I knew before I even knocked on the door what I would find. With that air of foreboding, I knocked.
An elderly woman opened the door.
“Hi, are you Mrs. Mary Brooks? I’m Henry Paris of Presbyterian Disaster Assistance. Your case manager asked me to drop by. Do you remember my call?
She replies, “Yes,” in a coarse, faint whisper. She can only talk in a hoarse, raspy voice. An oxygen dispenser sits on the table in her living room.
“Come on in. Let me show you. Oh! I’m so worried, those idiots left me with a half-done kitchen, look at this floor, see the hole.”
There is a hole about eight or ten inches wide covered with duct tape. The kitchen has new appliances but the bar is only partially finished. The floors of this mobile home are clearly rotted. The roof sags and the roof leaks. There is evidence of mold.
“Come on, look at the living room. Over here by the TV, see how the floor gives.
“I am so afraid, I don’t have any heat except these space heaters. When I run them the circuit breakers trip. I can smell burning insulation.”
Standing in the door of the bathroom I see the floor vent is open to the ground. There is no AC ductwork here either. She leads me into her bedroom. There sits another duct open to the ground.
In a rain of cursing she rasps, “I paid that no good something $12,000 and he promised he would repair the floors and the roof, but he just disappeared.
“Look at the ceiling over on the wall next to my bed, water pours in every time it rains.
“My house was washed away by Katrina; it is completely gone. We got about twenty feet of water here. Afterwards I bought this mobile home for $4,000. My daughter said this was great, she helped me paint it and said it was a great deal."
“Mrs. Mary, how long have you lived here? When did you get this mobile home? Didn’t you have a FEMA trailer?”
“Yes I had a FEMA trailer first but they took it way.”
“Took it away? I don’t understand.”
“Well, they gave me $39,000 for a new home. I paid this mobile home dealer $20,000 for a mobile home but he hasn’t ever delivered.”
“Mrs. Mary, did you give him a check? Have you filed a criminal complaint?”
“No, I paid him cash. I carried a box with the $39,000 in it. I paid him cash right out of the box.
“I gave my poor son $5,000 to help him with his family. I gave my daughter some, and I gave some to a few others.”
“Mrs. Mary you can’t stay here. Can’t you stay with your son or daughter, or your sister?”
“My son lives in Dothan, AL and has ten kids, he can barely take care of them, hardly me. My daughter is so into drugs she doesn’t even know where she is. My sister will not take me in."
She told me about her chronic degenerative lung disease and her serious bouts of depression that required hospitalization. As we talked she lets on she has substantial mental issues. It explains her volatile emotions, teary then sobbing, later laughing.
She pointed out a small outbuilding, getting very teary again as she told me her boy friend who died two years ago, who she loved so much, used to go out there and stay to get away from her when she got so bad. It was the only time I saw her really laugh, and that only for a few seconds before she lapsed into her teary state again.
I stand there thinking of what I can say or do that will ease her mind, knowing that it is going to be almost impossible to find grant money for her. There is nothing that can be said. She got money to relocate or rebuild and with no one to give her sound advice, she lost it.
She has serious mental health issues and is living in a mobile home with no heat except three space heaters. That is the most dangerous thing you can put in a mobile home.
Isn’t here a Health and Human Services organization in Mississippi? How can her son and daughter just leave her here?
I do the math mentally. She got $30,000 from FEMA, gave her son $5,000, and some to her daughter and a few others, paid $20,000 for a mobile home that wasn’t delivered, bought this mobile home for $4,000 and then paid some would-be carpenter $12,000 to fix it, when the only “fixing” practical is to trash it or burn it and start over. That is more than the $39,000 she got from FEMA.
About a mess like this, my mother said it best:
"It makes me so mad I could chew nails."
But the anger fades as Mrs. Mary’s situation just saddens me and reduces me to impotency. I feel like sitting down on her steps and just crying for her.
It only takes a while working here to come to an accommodation of Mrs. Mary’s dilemma. Mrs. Mary is an icon for everything wrong about this hurricane’s aftermath; about how the State can sacrifice someone like Mrs. Mary in order to rebuild a port or a factory to make more jobs for better tax revenue and industrial growth; about children, about how well we live Christ’s command to help:
“…Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; cease to do evil; learn to do good; seek justice; correct oppression; defend the fatherless; plead for the widow.” (Is 1:16-17)
One either inures oneself to Mrs. Mary’s tragedy, to the pathos of the poor and displaced and to His command; or one gives one’s soul up to the suffering and becomes one with their sorrow…and does something about it.
Peace and Grace
First, one of the more unbelievable Presidential elections transpired six days ago. One that will most probably transform this country if we can do it before sliding back into that old cynicism that you can’t change the system.
Then, I had to use my four wheel drive twice already to get out of a ditch (in a truck whose manufacturer I do not prefer over my brother’s Dodge RAM).
Then, dear friends who have been with PDA as long as me departed for new beginnings (not a bad thing I keep telling myself).
Then, tumultuous challenges for staffing surge as strongly as ever.
Then, the imperative to aid those widows, homeless and poor sounds as fresh today as it did two millennia ago. A tragic circumstance with a homeowner repeats the past. What a week.
Here it is:
My friend Heather (see her blog: http://seektheking-pda.blogspot.com/) has been the village manager at Pearlington since last spring. She finally decided to follow the decision of Jeremy, also a good friend and who was the work site manager, to move on to the mission of the Lagniappe Presbyterian Church in Waveland.
It’s a really strong church with a committed construction effort similar to PDA’s. The members I’ve met are very gracious, have offered equipment and labor to pull our Pearlington pods out of the swamp after Gustav and Ike washed them into it. Theirs is a PCA church, but our collaborative effort shows thus far dogma can often just be a drag on friendship and fellowship when we are following a Call.
It really hurts to see Heather go, she has been one of our best managers and has a heart in the right place; the kind of person I call a “keeper.” I know her choice was hard and she struggled not only with this decision, but the greater decision of “what am I going to do next?” I’ll posit that she will find herself in seminary sooner or later.
In her next to last post she wondered, “I have sometimes joked that I wish God would post a big neon sign for me, to communicate His will.” I can only say Heather, walk the road and you’ll find the way. Or, as someone said, “If you are going to walk on water, you’ve got to get out of the boat.”
Stay close Heather, we all miss you.
Today I relived essentially a previous experience. (If you are reading these posts, you will know which one.) This repetition is an inexcusable one that on one hand makes me mad that some power repeated it and on the other makes me sad that we as a people have allowed it.
The e-mail from the case worker said simply, “Henry will you check on this case? This woman is really fearful about winter. She has no heat and has holes in her floor.”
By now, you know that I did.
I drove the twenty minutes or so to get to her home. It is out westward on I-10 towards Bay Saint Louis, not quite there, but close. I took an exit south and followed a winding road that my Google Map described, took the next turn and wandered a mile or so down a narrow road until I saw the house number on the mail box on the roadside.
There stood another mobile home, smaller, but clearly of a 1980’s vintage like the one I found in the north county a few months back. I knew before I even knocked on the door what I would find. With that air of foreboding, I knocked.
An elderly woman opened the door.
“Hi, are you Mrs. Mary Brooks? I’m Henry Paris of Presbyterian Disaster Assistance. Your case manager asked me to drop by. Do you remember my call?
She replies, “Yes,” in a coarse, faint whisper. She can only talk in a hoarse, raspy voice. An oxygen dispenser sits on the table in her living room.
“Come on in. Let me show you. Oh! I’m so worried, those idiots left me with a half-done kitchen, look at this floor, see the hole.”
There is a hole about eight or ten inches wide covered with duct tape. The kitchen has new appliances but the bar is only partially finished. The floors of this mobile home are clearly rotted. The roof sags and the roof leaks. There is evidence of mold.
“Come on, look at the living room. Over here by the TV, see how the floor gives.
“I am so afraid, I don’t have any heat except these space heaters. When I run them the circuit breakers trip. I can smell burning insulation.”
Standing in the door of the bathroom I see the floor vent is open to the ground. There is no AC ductwork here either. She leads me into her bedroom. There sits another duct open to the ground.
In a rain of cursing she rasps, “I paid that no good something $12,000 and he promised he would repair the floors and the roof, but he just disappeared.
“Look at the ceiling over on the wall next to my bed, water pours in every time it rains.
“My house was washed away by Katrina; it is completely gone. We got about twenty feet of water here. Afterwards I bought this mobile home for $4,000. My daughter said this was great, she helped me paint it and said it was a great deal."
“Mrs. Mary, how long have you lived here? When did you get this mobile home? Didn’t you have a FEMA trailer?”
“Yes I had a FEMA trailer first but they took it way.”
“Took it away? I don’t understand.”
“Well, they gave me $39,000 for a new home. I paid this mobile home dealer $20,000 for a mobile home but he hasn’t ever delivered.”
“Mrs. Mary, did you give him a check? Have you filed a criminal complaint?”
“No, I paid him cash. I carried a box with the $39,000 in it. I paid him cash right out of the box.
“I gave my poor son $5,000 to help him with his family. I gave my daughter some, and I gave some to a few others.”
“Mrs. Mary you can’t stay here. Can’t you stay with your son or daughter, or your sister?”
“My son lives in Dothan, AL and has ten kids, he can barely take care of them, hardly me. My daughter is so into drugs she doesn’t even know where she is. My sister will not take me in."
She told me about her chronic degenerative lung disease and her serious bouts of depression that required hospitalization. As we talked she lets on she has substantial mental issues. It explains her volatile emotions, teary then sobbing, later laughing.
She pointed out a small outbuilding, getting very teary again as she told me her boy friend who died two years ago, who she loved so much, used to go out there and stay to get away from her when she got so bad. It was the only time I saw her really laugh, and that only for a few seconds before she lapsed into her teary state again.
I stand there thinking of what I can say or do that will ease her mind, knowing that it is going to be almost impossible to find grant money for her. There is nothing that can be said. She got money to relocate or rebuild and with no one to give her sound advice, she lost it.
She has serious mental health issues and is living in a mobile home with no heat except three space heaters. That is the most dangerous thing you can put in a mobile home.
Isn’t here a Health and Human Services organization in Mississippi? How can her son and daughter just leave her here?
I do the math mentally. She got $30,000 from FEMA, gave her son $5,000, and some to her daughter and a few others, paid $20,000 for a mobile home that wasn’t delivered, bought this mobile home for $4,000 and then paid some would-be carpenter $12,000 to fix it, when the only “fixing” practical is to trash it or burn it and start over. That is more than the $39,000 she got from FEMA.
About a mess like this, my mother said it best:
"It makes me so mad I could chew nails."
But the anger fades as Mrs. Mary’s situation just saddens me and reduces me to impotency. I feel like sitting down on her steps and just crying for her.
It only takes a while working here to come to an accommodation of Mrs. Mary’s dilemma. Mrs. Mary is an icon for everything wrong about this hurricane’s aftermath; about how the State can sacrifice someone like Mrs. Mary in order to rebuild a port or a factory to make more jobs for better tax revenue and industrial growth; about children, about how well we live Christ’s command to help:
“…Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; cease to do evil; learn to do good; seek justice; correct oppression; defend the fatherless; plead for the widow.” (Is 1:16-17)
One either inures oneself to Mrs. Mary’s tragedy, to the pathos of the poor and displaced and to His command; or one gives one’s soul up to the suffering and becomes one with their sorrow…and does something about it.
Peace and Grace
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Day 220 - Reflection
I remember as a young boy riding to school on segregated city buses.
I remember walking in the local five and dime store in Rome, GA, seeing the signs over the water fountains and rest rooms that said “Colored” and “White.”
I remember seeing the pictures in newspaper stories of the fire hoses, of the snarling police dogs straining on leases.
I remember that speech, “I have a dream…”
I remember the news story on TV showing Robert Kennedy lying mortally wounded on the floor of that hotel floor.
I remember the terrible news story about that terrible day in Memphis.
I remember that day when “Grant Park” meant mad-dog police going berserk with clubs against citizens protesting an insane war.
I remember Detroit burning.
I remember that day in Iowa when I thought this is a day just like the one that happened with Jimmy Carter.
I remember so many things, so many events, so many doubts and a cynicism that said a day like this might never come about.
I hear the chant, “Yes we can!”
I think, maybe this time, in reality, the torch has been passed on from one generation to another.
I only can pray that we may be that beacon, that we may be a city on the hill whose light we cannot hide under a basket, that we may be that example of goodness and justice to the world.
I hope that God may bless America, that we will hold true to his tenets.
I remember walking in the local five and dime store in Rome, GA, seeing the signs over the water fountains and rest rooms that said “Colored” and “White.”
I remember seeing the pictures in newspaper stories of the fire hoses, of the snarling police dogs straining on leases.
I remember that speech, “I have a dream…”
I remember the news story on TV showing Robert Kennedy lying mortally wounded on the floor of that hotel floor.
I remember the terrible news story about that terrible day in Memphis.
I remember that day when “Grant Park” meant mad-dog police going berserk with clubs against citizens protesting an insane war.
I remember Detroit burning.
I remember that day in Iowa when I thought this is a day just like the one that happened with Jimmy Carter.
I remember so many things, so many events, so many doubts and a cynicism that said a day like this might never come about.
I hear the chant, “Yes we can!”
I think, maybe this time, in reality, the torch has been passed on from one generation to another.
I only can pray that we may be that beacon, that we may be a city on the hill whose light we cannot hide under a basket, that we may be that example of goodness and justice to the world.
I hope that God may bless America, that we will hold true to his tenets.
Sunday, November 2, 2008
Day 217 - Old Friends (He who gathered little had no lack)
The last couple of weeks have been enjoyable. We have had crews from the Arkansas Presbytery, Fifth Ave. PC(NYC), Stillwater, Minnesota, New Bern, NC and Virginia. There were familiar faces in the New Bern group and the Arkansas group. Yesterday evening a crew from the Presbytery of Western North Carolina arrived. A lot of them are from Gastonia.
Many in each of these churches have been down three, four or five times. The last few days we were able to treat the Minnesota folks to some northern weather, lows in the evening have kissed the freezing point or hovered a little above. (I brought in my epiphylum a couple last week.).
One of the Gastonia group came to me this morning to tell me a woman had driven up in a truck and was looking for a place to stay. I went out and found her.
Standing by her truck looking in I noticed her pillow and blanket were in the reclined passenger seat. I asked her how she was doing and her story came out in bits and pieces.
“I drove over from Tallahassee and have no place to stay. “
“What are you doing in Gulfport?”
“I came over to take care of my father over in Van cleave.”
“Can’t you stay with him?”
“Well, to tell you the truth, his wife doesn’t much like me and will not let me stay there.”
“So, how can you take care of your father?”
“I came over to be sure he gets his shots. I slept in my truck last night and I am about frozen. To tell you the truth, I got drunk to warm up last night. I’m looking for a place to warm up and stay just for tonight. I think I have a room tomorrow. Do you have any place warm I could stay for today?”
I could tell she had been drinking from the strong alcohol odor about her. She probably was not in any condition to drive her truck.
“Do you want some coffee? We’ve got some in the dining tent.”
“Sure, that sounds good.”
“What do you want in it?”
“Just black, please.”
She was wiping tears from her eyes when I brought out the cup of coffee and gave it to her.
“Don’t you want something to eat, we have cereal and toast in the tent?”
“I just need a place to cry.”
“Well, come on in the tent and sit, you can warm up.”
She came in and sat down, still crying a little and dabbing her eyes with the paper towel she was holding in the truck.
“Are you sure you don’t want anything to eat? We’ve got toast.”
“That sounds good, I could use some toast and butter.”
I made the toast while I prepared my own to eat with my oatmeal. While she ate her toast and I my oatmeal we talked some more.
“So what brings you to Gulfport?”
“Oh, I used to live here.”
Her story was getting a little confusing so I asked, “I thought you said you came from Tallahassee?”
“No, Pas Christian. When Katrina hit it washed me up past I-10, I treaded water and swam up to the Lutheran emergency center.”
I was having a little difficulty believing all this since I know a little about the surge, but I just listened.
Since it wasn’t wise for her to drive in her condition I thought I might buy an hour or so inviting her to our church service. I went to look for the pastor. Having no luck (I was an hour early, the clocks turned back last night) I returned to the dining tent to see her heading for her car.
“I have to tell you that we don’t really have any good place for you to stay in the Village other than our pods. But, there is a Salvation Army Shelter in Pascagoula that takes in folks that don’t have a place to stay.”
“How far is that about 40 miles or so? No, I don’t guess the gas in this old truck would make it that far.” She got in the truck and said, “ I just wanted to use your facilities.”
She slammed the door and left.
In the tent I bumped into the team leader for the Gastonia group. We talked a little about the homeless issue and how we served the homeless during my time in Atlanta at Central Presbyterian Church. I mentioned that our associate pastor, Kim Richter, had the pastor’s position in Ashville, Westminster Church, I believe. Not only has this person met Kim (he participated in a class she taught in his Presbytery) but he has read a book by her husband, Don.
As I say, it’s a small world, a shrinking denomination, or I’m near some gravitational sinkhole that pulls my past along with me.
Later in our church service today one of the reading was from Second Corinthians (8:8ff) where Paul talked to the poor Macedonian Church. It seems apropos.
“I say this not as a command but to prove by the earnestness of others that your love is also genuine…it is best to complete what you began so that your readiness in desiring is matched by your completing it with what you have. For if the readiness is there, it is acceptable to complete it according to what a man has, not according to what he has not… I do not mean that others should be eased and you burdened but that as a matter of equality your abundance at the present time should supply their want so that their abundance may supply your want… As it is written, ‘He who gathered much had nothing over, and he who gathered little had no lack.’”
Peace and Grace
Many in each of these churches have been down three, four or five times. The last few days we were able to treat the Minnesota folks to some northern weather, lows in the evening have kissed the freezing point or hovered a little above. (I brought in my epiphylum a couple last week.).
One of the Gastonia group came to me this morning to tell me a woman had driven up in a truck and was looking for a place to stay. I went out and found her.
Standing by her truck looking in I noticed her pillow and blanket were in the reclined passenger seat. I asked her how she was doing and her story came out in bits and pieces.
“I drove over from Tallahassee and have no place to stay. “
“What are you doing in Gulfport?”
“I came over to take care of my father over in Van cleave.”
“Can’t you stay with him?”
“Well, to tell you the truth, his wife doesn’t much like me and will not let me stay there.”
“So, how can you take care of your father?”
“I came over to be sure he gets his shots. I slept in my truck last night and I am about frozen. To tell you the truth, I got drunk to warm up last night. I’m looking for a place to warm up and stay just for tonight. I think I have a room tomorrow. Do you have any place warm I could stay for today?”
I could tell she had been drinking from the strong alcohol odor about her. She probably was not in any condition to drive her truck.
“Do you want some coffee? We’ve got some in the dining tent.”
“Sure, that sounds good.”
“What do you want in it?”
“Just black, please.”
She was wiping tears from her eyes when I brought out the cup of coffee and gave it to her.
“Don’t you want something to eat, we have cereal and toast in the tent?”
“I just need a place to cry.”
“Well, come on in the tent and sit, you can warm up.”
She came in and sat down, still crying a little and dabbing her eyes with the paper towel she was holding in the truck.
“Are you sure you don’t want anything to eat? We’ve got toast.”
“That sounds good, I could use some toast and butter.”
I made the toast while I prepared my own to eat with my oatmeal. While she ate her toast and I my oatmeal we talked some more.
“So what brings you to Gulfport?”
“Oh, I used to live here.”
Her story was getting a little confusing so I asked, “I thought you said you came from Tallahassee?”
“No, Pas Christian. When Katrina hit it washed me up past I-10, I treaded water and swam up to the Lutheran emergency center.”
I was having a little difficulty believing all this since I know a little about the surge, but I just listened.
Since it wasn’t wise for her to drive in her condition I thought I might buy an hour or so inviting her to our church service. I went to look for the pastor. Having no luck (I was an hour early, the clocks turned back last night) I returned to the dining tent to see her heading for her car.
“I have to tell you that we don’t really have any good place for you to stay in the Village other than our pods. But, there is a Salvation Army Shelter in Pascagoula that takes in folks that don’t have a place to stay.”
“How far is that about 40 miles or so? No, I don’t guess the gas in this old truck would make it that far.” She got in the truck and said, “ I just wanted to use your facilities.”
She slammed the door and left.
In the tent I bumped into the team leader for the Gastonia group. We talked a little about the homeless issue and how we served the homeless during my time in Atlanta at Central Presbyterian Church. I mentioned that our associate pastor, Kim Richter, had the pastor’s position in Ashville, Westminster Church, I believe. Not only has this person met Kim (he participated in a class she taught in his Presbytery) but he has read a book by her husband, Don.
As I say, it’s a small world, a shrinking denomination, or I’m near some gravitational sinkhole that pulls my past along with me.
Later in our church service today one of the reading was from Second Corinthians (8:8ff) where Paul talked to the poor Macedonian Church. It seems apropos.
“I say this not as a command but to prove by the earnestness of others that your love is also genuine…it is best to complete what you began so that your readiness in desiring is matched by your completing it with what you have. For if the readiness is there, it is acceptable to complete it according to what a man has, not according to what he has not… I do not mean that others should be eased and you burdened but that as a matter of equality your abundance at the present time should supply their want so that their abundance may supply your want… As it is written, ‘He who gathered much had nothing over, and he who gathered little had no lack.’”
Peace and Grace
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