Sink or Swim

Imagine you are responding to a ship that has sunk.  You arrive on the scene and there are many people bobbing in the water (think the sinking scene in the film Titanic).  Your boat is filled with life preservers, in fact you have a nearly an endless supply of life preservers.  How do you respond?  Do you spend time trying to figure out which of the people in the water know how to swim?  What about the ones that had the chance to take swim lessons but refused them?  Or, maybe some of them are just pretending to be drowning but could actually get to safety on their own.   Hmmm, how do you decide who to give this abundance of life preservers too???  I hope this sounds absurd to you.  Of course, you would simply start flinging the life preservers to everyone.  It wouldn’t matter how they got there, you would simply want to get them to safety.

That is currently what we do in our distribution center.  When people arrive in need we help them.  At that moment it is not important how they got to where they are; we help them.  It doesn’t matter what car they drive, what size their television is, how many mistakes they have made in their life, or which of their choices I agree with.  We help them. It doesn’t matter where they came from or how they got here, we help them.  The following scripture guides much of our work at Bidwell:

“For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me…”

One interesting thing I notice about that piece of scripture is how simple the needs presented are.  It does not say, “For I was hungry and you made sure that I deserved it and then you gave me food.”  It does not say “I was thirsty but because I have a decent car you decided I didn’t need a drink.”  It does not say “I was a stranger and after you determined that I had appropriate documents you welcomed me.”  It is simple and clear.  And Jesus said….

“‘I tell you with certainty, since you did it for one of the least important of these brothers of mine, you did it for me.”

Amen and Peace to you,

Anne Bacon