A Quick Thought On Helping Others

I was approached after this morning's worship service by one of our ushers. He told me there was a man and his daughter there who came in asking for financial assistance. It's the policy of our congregation to ask people in that position to come to a service or in this case stay through the service before we find out what we can possibly do for them. I believe that's a fair policy.

I met with the man who appeared to be in his 30's. The girl with him was probably four or five. He said he lived in our area. He wasn't a member of any church and that his mother died in another state. He said he had been recently laid off from work and needed $100 to $150 to get him to the funeral. He would worry about getting the money to make it back home once he was there. He even offered to call someone to back up his story.

Now a cynic would say that's a pretty unlikely story. How would we know that whoever he might call on the phone wasn't part of his plan? We could have grilled him about why he couldn't look at other avenues for the money. I'll admit that in the past I probably would have asked the same thing.

I'm proud to say we were able to help him out. At least three of us invited him to come visit us again with his wife and daughter.We usually don't give that much monetary assistance to one person. Due to the number of requests we get we try to help more people with less money each.

Will we ever see him again? Was his story legitimate? More importantly are those really our concerns? That end of the equation doesn't lay on us or our consciences. The only thing we needed to worry about was whether or not we could help this person who expressed a need. If we had the opportunity and failed then we're the ones with the problem as individuals and as a congregation.

Whether or not the man's mother was dead and his story was real is something he has to be responsible for. I don't believe we need to foolishly throw money away but we should be more willing to give than to not give. I know there are those who become "regulars" in needing assistance. I've personally dealt with some. Those need to be treated differently but that's not the type of situation I'm talking about.

This is important for a couple of reasons. First I think churches in the past have been more stingy in situations like this than they should be. I realize there are budgets to meet but in our case I'm sure the contribution today was over $2000. What's $100 from that? Secondly we're going to be seeing more situations like this in the future. With fuel and food prices soaring as they are more churches are going to be asked to help more people than ever before. Obviously we can't help them all with everything they need. We do need to make sure we're doing what we can and in this instance I'm glad to see that we did.

I wonder if we'll see this man and his family again. I'll let you know.