When I was in sixth grade my Grandpa died and people brought over food for weeks on end. We didn’t need to cook hardly at all. I feel like that’s one of the standard ways that people take care of each other in our churches. When we don’t know what else to do we cook.
Yesterday my friend Sara Choe wrote a good blog. She was confronted with the reality of sex trafficking in her own neighborhood. She was disturbed and stirred to act. Then she ended up facing the questions many of us face when we are stirred to meet a need in our community. She ended with this: “Yet the question I’m faced with isn’t, ‘Should I do something about this?’ Friends, how should I respond? Between being a full-time support raising missions mobilizer, and serving in several capacities at church, what am I to do?”
I was recently faced with similar questions in my community. There is a woman in our community here in Gainesville, GA who has recently been battling several (literally more than ten) infections and illnesses at one time. She recently moved to Gainesville to work for Adventures in Missions and soon thereafter came down with illness. One of my close friends has been helping to take care of her for weeks. She has been nursing her, taking her to doctors’ appointments and making sure she is fed and cared for. But it’s beginning to take a toll on her and she tried to enlist some help.
My friend sent out an email inviting people to visit the woman who has been suffering from illness to pray for her. She was a little disappointed with the response. We talked about it. She started to question the level of commitment in our community to BE the church.
As we talked through the lengthy emotional ordeal and the litany of diagnoses this woman has endured, my heart was breaking for her. I felt the urgency of need to help her, but I wasn’t sure what I could do. I had a prior engagement at the time of the prayer meeting organized by my friend, but even if I had been free I wouldn’t have been excited about going. If I were to pray for the woman I would want to be able to counsel her through what has been going on for her spiritually and emotionally throughout this trying physical ordeal.
As I began to process what I could offer, I was thinking about how there are already a lot of things going on in my life. At the same time there are not many other people answering the call of community, trying to be the care and ministry she needs. So is that my duty? What can I do for this woman whom I have never met?
So what do we do when cooking lasagna isn’t enough? How would you like to see your communities coming around brothers and sisters in need?
