Going Beyond

It is March and now spring, and I am still contemplating the new year.  New Year’s resolutions are as easy to break as they are to make, so for years I have jokingly made resolutions that I knew I could keep, including not drinking coffee or eating eggplant — two things that I dislike the taste of. I have kept both of those resolutions for many years running now, but my wife keeps suggesting that I am missing the point. 
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Tom Richards

Rather than making resolutions, I am thinking more about personal goals.  Jesus was constantly connecting with people on the margins of his community — tax collectors, Samaritan women, the poor, sick, and hungry. Jesus taught that God looks carefully at how we treat these people — people he refers to as “the least of these.” That led me to ask myself — who are the people with the greatest needs in my community, and how close am I to them?

Jesus was often criticized for spending his time with the ‘wrong people.’ “Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, ‘This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them’” (Luke 15:1-2). I am not often accused of this. Most of my friends are very healthy, functional, and respectable people — some of them are even Presbyterians! Who are the people in my community that others may be unjustly looking down on or excluding, and how often do I eat dinner with them as Jesus often did?

Some of my family seems to be better at this than I am. Last Sunday, I was waiting for the service to begin at 1st Pres, and I received a text message from my youngest daughter. A refugee family in Vermont that she is close to has been struggling with bed bugs, and our daughter asked for our help in collecting money to buy their kids a new metal bunk bed frame and two mattresses. I was so impressed with my daughter and also struck by how close she is to this family. She met them when she lived in Vermont. She now lives in Austria but is still close enough to this family to know their needs. I do not currently know any refugees, and I don’t even know if there are any in Kootenai County or how I would connect with them.

My daughter has long been a magnet for the people that Jesus refers to as “the least of these.” People who are marginalized, outcast, or struggling are drawn to her, recognizing that she will love them, care for them, and fight for them. My wife has spent years working and volunteering at Union Gospel Mission’s (UGM) Center for Women and Children in Coeur d’Alene, walking alongside women seeking a path out of poverty and homelessness.  My wife has never experienced those things, yet she can connect with these women and walk with them as they find their way out.

I don’t know how much of this is a natural gift and how much of it is a commitment to love people to reach beyond one’s own social circles. I know that it is a mix of both. The natural gifts do not seem to be my strong suit, unlike my wife and my daughter. I sometimes find it awkward and uncomfortable to try to connect with people from very different walks of life, and I often feel I am not able to offer the kind of empathy and connection that seems to come naturally to some others, my wife and daughter included. 

I was quick to send money to my daughter for beds for the refugee family, something that I am able to do. I also seek to help “the least of these” with regular financial support for UGM, the 1st Pres Neighborhood Closet, and other programs. This year, I am challenging myself to go beyond that and find ways to be more personal in reaching out to people outside of my comfortable social circles.

One way I have found to do this is by volunteering with Family Promise. We have served several times as overnight hosts. I was nervous about it at first, feeling inadequate to know how to talk to and connect with the families that are staying overnight at the church. Overnight hosting with Family Promise has turned out to be a better fit than I anticipated. Some of this is the reality of the guest family’s situations — after dinner, they have kids to take care of and get ready for bed, and in the mornings, they are focused on breakfast and getting family members off to work and school — there really isn’t a lot of time for conversation. The main responsibility of overnight hosts is simply to spend the night at the church and be available if anything comes up — which it rarely does. I have not made lasting friendships with Family Promise guests, but I have had some wonderful conversations with people listening to their stories, and hopefully, I have been an encouragement and will continue to be. 

Attending a Family Promise training recently at 1st Pres, I was struck by this statistic — over 700 volunteers worked with Family Promise last year in Kootenai County. 700 people in our community are committing some of their time to walking alongside struggling families to encourage and support them, and now I am one of them. I was also reminded that not everyone needs to have my daughter’s ‘people skills’, as they can use drivers, cooks, food servers, etc. This is a small step in the right direction for me, but who knows, maybe someday I can expand my social circle as wide as Jesus did!
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In His Name, Tom