Keeping a Holy Lent, Day 10: Buy a few $5 fast food gift cards to give to homeless people you encounter.

Okay, I realize I have missed a couple days – living so far away from my family has made time with them even more precious than it is. I am going back to Saturday’s ide for two reasons: 1) I confess that I have not yet done it. 2) It is probably the most important item on this list for me to do.

Here is why:

I have already mentioned that giving brings me great joy; and it does. However in our culture giving has become sanitized. There is often a great distance between the giver and those who receive the gift. Most often we give to charities or churches so that they can distribute aid to the ones who need it…whatever the need may be.  There is certainly benefit to this kind of giving. It means that the few dollars I give are combined with the gifts, large and small, of others to do bigger things than I am capable of doing by myself; to serve more people or take care of larger needs or both!

At the same time, this means that I am never, or at best rarely, in relationship with those I seek to help.  There are a lot of dangers in that absence of relationship.  One among many is it assumes help only goes one way. To put it very cynically: “Here I am. I have the wherewithal to help you, who need what I have. You have nothing I need.” It inflates my own self-importance and diminishes the importance of the one to whom I give.  It can become a denial that the other, the one I am called to serve, is also one made in God’s image and may also be called to serve me in ways that I can’t even imagine. In short, it assumes that I have no need of the relationship.

Isaiah offers a word from God that hints at this danger, “Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin?” (Isa 58:6-7 NRS)

When we share our bread with the hungry we can no longer hide ourselves from our own kin. The text invites us to share not just money with charities to help efficiently, but to be in relationship with others who are also made in God’s image.

So, I am going to do this.  Maybe more than once before Lent is over, I am going to do this!

You have made humankind in your image, God of all life; male and female you have made us. Help me to love my neighbor in such a way that I recognize their value and their wholeness as a brother or sister made in your image as well.  Amen!

Shalom Y’all,

Owen