The yard did have a lot of leaves in it, as you can see by the number of piles, although, there is more of a story here.
Like always with me. More of a story.
It really starts the night before.
So here Hubbs (what I find myself calling the husband most often) and I are in a new city, trying to make new friends, trying to get plugged in, thinking we have found our church home for the next four months, and our church is offering this Theology on Tap night at a local craft brewery.
While I don't like beer, I do like theology, AND they had falafel, so it was a win-win for both my mind and my tongue.
Each month they do this, I guess. An open-to-the-public event, they have a pre-set topic, a moderator, and what seems like an intellectual group of people from all walks of life, bringing many diverse thoughts to the table.
This night's topic was incarceration. Prison. The why, the how, the should it be, the is it accomplishing what it sets out to do, and the is there a solution?
One bit that got hammered on over and over again throughout the night was that when someone gets out of prison it is very hard for them to get adjusted to and accepted back into society. My thoughts are still out on how best this should be done, but it made for interesting mental exercise, and I think everyone came away with the take-home of "We need to do what we can to help people learn valuable life skills, whether to keep them from committing crimes and going to prison in the first place, or after they have been released and want to straighten out their lives."
Hubbs and I found it ironic, as we continued the already 2+ hour long discussion all the way home, that there we were, a room full of 60 or more self-proclaimed philosophes, drinking our expensive craft beers and eating our falafel, talking in hypothetical terms and speaking in idioms about a topic we were, at that very moment, strikingly far removed from.
I mean, to put it bluntly, I have never gone to jail.
And I don't fear ever going to jail (apart from maybe being thrown in jail for my faith if this whole place keeps progressing more and more tyrannically).
Yet there I was, talking about it in a way that made me sound like I had the answers, I knew the issues, and I had waded through the trenches, more than I actually have, to somehow better the situation.
No. Really, my boots have not hit that much of the ground.
And so we got home and went to bed, feeling quasi-brilliant, and quasi-hypocritical.
Hubbs had a meeting the next morning and was out of the house when knock-knock-knock a man is at the door.
Now, I am afraid of strangers just as much as the next person, although probably not as afraid as I am of what lurks in the dark (the real fear behind "the dark") and falling from great heights (again, no one is afraid of heights. We are afraid of FALLING from great heights), but I had the window shades open as I sat there reading my Bible---so he could see me. We were separated by nothing but glass. Against my fear, I had to open the door.
And there stood a man with a rake.
"Um, hey ma'am. My wife and I just moved to the neighborhood...and you know....we paid the rent, but sometimes there just isn't anything left over after that. We have a baby coming in March and you know, sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do to keep food on the table. Could I rake your yard, miss? For anything. A dollar, five dollars, whatever you could give would be great."
I told him I needed to ask my husband and took his phone number.
How perfect, I thought! This must be God, really. We get to put said boots to the ground! Help out some guy who wants to work, is asking for our help, and hey, we don't have a rake here so it all works out in the end.
Hubbs got home and I told him all.
So we call Mr. Rake and over he comes.
Although---I feel like I should mention now---that a woman dropped him off in a 2013 Nissan Altima. Which is a pretty nice car. And when I say "dropped him off" what I really mean is sat across the street with the car on the whole time he was here.
But anyway, what an opportunity. The very next morning after we had philologized about something similar to this very thing the very night before.
He worked for an hour. Did a good job, too, of putting piles together! We thought it would be a good idea to give a mixed payment, money + food. Afterall who doesn't have to buy food?!
So Mr. Rake finishes and Hubbs goes out with $20 and a $15 box of food. "Hey, thanks for working, man, the yard looks great," Hubbs says as he hands it to him.
To which Mr. Rake replies, "OH no way, man. This is not nearly enough for what I did for you."
"Um....you put leaves in piles for one hour. And we never agreed upon a price before."
"No way, man, I was thinking more like $200."
"That's not happening. Again, you worked for ONE HOUR and we never settled on a price before hand. Here. Here's ten more dollars. And look, we are giving you a box of food, too, bro," said Hubbs, when Mr. Rake looks at him all insulted and goes, "Man, I don't want no mo' food! I cannot accept this little from you."
At this point we weren't sure whether this guy was actually angry or just playing the game.... But we didn't really want a stranger on our lawn to be angry...
"Man, the back yard alone is worth at least $50 and this front yard is at least $20..."
"Dude, you worked for one hour, raking leaves. Here, have a gift card too...."
Finally through a little more coercive talking Hubbs got him to leave. But not before he asked us for newspapers that he could put under his feet so he wouldn't get their sparkling car floor dirty.
*Sigh.
We were angry at first. Sat at the lunch table and just stared at each other.
Having gone the night before to that whole prison/keep people out of prison thing, we really did want to help him. We were just happy he said he wanted to work for money and food, rather than do the sometimes easier thing of committing a crime to get those things.
Our jail discussion started right up again, needless to say. He either was a con man OR -- and this would actually be sadder--- he was someone who (il)legitimately thinks he is down and out (i.e. sell your car and don't idle it for an hour and you will have a whole lot more money in your bank), but yet has such an entitlement mentality that he ACTUALLY believes that he was worth more than $20 an hour (the majority of this country does not make more than $20 an hour, fyi) and we OWE him more than $20 an hour + food. Even though he was the one begging us for work and did, relatively speaking, work that takes almost no skill (i.e. children can rake leaves).
If that is the case...yikes! Sorry, Charlie. Feeling entitled or not, the world your mind resides in is an alternate reality to the truth of this society.
Nevertheless, there we sat at our kitchen table, finding ourselves now in the place of How Do We Think About Helping People From Now On?
The devil would want us to say, "Never again." And maybe this was something God allowed him to bring in our life to test us with. Who knows.
The devil would want us to become racist, skeptical, hard-hearted, and write off even the truly down and out, all as a means of protecting ourselves from "people like him" in the forever future.
*Sigh again.
But we can't do that.
We will continue to be generous. For never has successful generosity been based upon the gratitude (or lack of gratitude) of the one receiving.
It poses a very clear picture of Luke 6:35 where it says, "But love your enemies, do good to them and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked."
When you read that one has to say to themself, "Well, I am not that much different than Mr. Entitlement Scammer, am I?"
For how often is the Lord kind to me, and I, in return, am ungrateful?
How often am I wicked, yet, as sure as the eastern sun in the morning, he is unnecessarily generous and gives me bread?
To how many people (ourselves included in this question) does he give sustenance to and they just turn---like Mr. Entitlement Scammer--- and say, "I don't want no mo' food!!"?
"Excuse me, Mrs. Wolf Queen. Did you just tell God that you don't want anymore of what he is giving you? But what will you do when you go hungry? From whom will you feed then?"
Aren't you glad God isn't like us? Isn't like me?
What if he was only kind to the holy and thankful?
Think about it.
What if you only got oxygen and heart beats (because those are things we don't have apart from him) when you were RIGHTEOUS and GRATEFUL?
Like a fish without water.
And you know it.
And thanks to a scam artist or a man with severe entitlement issues, so now do I.
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