There But For the Grace of God Go I
By Ted Contag, Stewardship Ministry Team
On a cold snowy Friday in early February my business partner and I closed our offices and took our team to St. Paul to serve meals to homeless people through a program called JESUS Delivers. Modeled after the home grocer, Simon Delivers, the ministry serves about 250 lunches 4 to 5 times per week to the St. Paul homeless community using a mobile kitchen and lay ministry volunteers.
After a quick tour of the mobile kitchen, we went to work preparing the food. At about 1:00 pm we pulled the truck into the parking lot behind the Dorothy Day Center and started passing out meals. While most of my team was in the truck preparing the meals, a couple of us were outside setting up a table and piling it with the winter clothes we had gathered from our closets to share with the homeless. I have given old clothes to Goodwill on a regular basis, but this was a very different experience. One of the first people to approach our table was a large man with a cane wearing tennis shoes and his coat hanging open in the cold wind. He said to me, "Do you have any coats? My zipper has broken and I cannot keep it closed." That morning at the last minute I had decided to throw my "snow blowing coat" in the car along with the other clothes, just in case someone needed it. This man DID need it. With a smile, he left the parking lot saying that he would be warm tonight. As I stood there watching these men and women rifle through the clothes that hung useless in my closet the night before, I marveled at how different this felt than putting boxes of clothes on the front porch or unloading them at some drop-off site. The act of handing that coat across the table changed its value from nothing to everything. I had a chance to speak with many of these people and hear their stories. There was a woman who used to be a social worker who now was wearing open slippers without socks in fresh snow, and a man in a wheelchair without a coat or gloves. None of them complained.
When I woke up the next morning, images of these people were running through my mind. What were the inflection points in my life that led me to be who I am today and not homeless standing on the snowy curb in front of the Dorothy Day Center? What if my parents had died when I was young? What if I had been abused? What if I had gotten involved with a different crowd in school? What if.....? What are the things in your life you could "hand across the table" and change their value from nothing to everything? By giving those things away you make much more room for God in your heart and add more real value to your life.
