Several years ago, I was visiting a long-time friend and attended her church with her on the Sunday morning during my stay. It was a relatively small congregation and the service was quite informal. It included a presentation by a group of members who had just returned from a mission to build houses in some underdeveloped country. While their report contained a few interesting facts about the country and the culture, it seemed to be mostly about themselves and how much “good” they had done. A lot was said about how grateful the people they’d been helping were. They seemed to be patting themselves on the back and expecting some sort of reward in the form of praise or congratulations. I got a sense of almost smug satisfaction and did not feel inclined to add my praises to the many that were heaped on them by the rest of the congregation. The whole thing reminded me of a lesson I learned many years before.
It started when my dad heard of a family that needed more help than they were getting from the county or state assistance; a woman who had been widowed or abandoned with two children of elementary school age. It was just a couple weeks before Christmas when Dad asked me and my sisters to donate some of our outgrown and unused toys for the eight-year-old boy and his six-year-old sister.
If you’ve read my tales about my dad; about how much he enjoyed Christmas and how important he considered toys to be to a child’s learning and development, you could probably guess that he would take on as much of the bill as he could for some new toys, a fine dinner, even a Christmas tree for that little family. I suspect that his request for our participation in the project was an attempt to teach us something about charity, sharing, and an awareness of the needs of others. Mother told us that we wouldn’t miss the toys we had outgrown or never cared much about, and that we would feel really good about our “good deed” as a result.
I was willing to give it a try but found that the doll I hadn’t played with for years had somehow become one of my most loved toys. On the other hand, I didn’t need the coloring book with uninteresting pictures and only three or four pages already colored – I could tear them out. The tin of watercolors was nearly new; only missing a brush and the paper dolls I hadn’t finished cutting out in two years were in pretty good shape – the little girl might appreciate not having to cut them all out herself. A jigsaw puzzle with a missing piece, three packets of unused bubble-bath crystals, an outgrown board game and a chipped plaster figurine from the carnival went into the box.
I was relieved when Dad said that we would leave the box of toys, along with the tree and bags of groceries, anonymously. At the time, I told myself that it was because we wanted them to think they were from Santa Claus, but I later realized that I was ashamed of giving only things I didn’t care about.
I’m sure that my parents were sincere in their attempt to be unobtrusively helpful. They had no wish to be thanked or even acknowledged for their generosity. I know that the time, effort and money they spent took something away from their own lives; they were far from well-off enough to be considered philanthropists. They cared about people and did what they could to help.
I wonder how many of us actually share our good fortune rather than simply giving what we won’t miss. I know, a can of corn here, a pair of mittens there, or five bucks out of the budget won’t really make much difference to most of us—and it could be a real help to those who truly need them, but do we need to feel so righteous about it? Charity, in the nicest sense, involves things like time, concern, attention—not just material things.
Ask yourself if you’d really give up that cozy Christmas Eve to go sit with a lonely stranger who is facing frightening surgery, a night battling drug addiction, eight more hours of pain from cancer. Did you put something in one of those red kettles last month? If you didn’t, or even if you did, remember that hunger and other needs don’t happen only in December.