I can only describe my parents as real, honest to goodness salt of the earth type people. The type of people that take the shirt off their own back to help people sometimes. And honestly, I’ve thought to myself on more than one occasion that I did not aspire to be quite as nice as they are.
I have witnessed them let a lot of people come live with them over the years. They’ve used their savings to help people and they’ve helped support people for years. And to be honest, I have waffled on whether their sacrifices make them the most saintly people ever, or if they need to learn more boundaries when it came to helping. But my parents have boundaries. I’ve seen those lately too. And they do their best to help when prompted, and also to step back when prompted.
And this weekend I witnessed someone pack up their home and their children so they could go to a homeless shelter. Because the rent hikes are ridiculous. And some part of me wanted to say “oh please don’t do that, you can come and live with me!” Now, I don’t have the type of relationship with this person where that would work and they would have said no had I offered. But part of me also thought… someone who is closer to her should be making this offer.
Now there are clearly two camps to this. The camp in which you say, you made your bed, now lie in it. Figure it out. And the camp in which you say, let’s help one another. And realistically when it comes down to it, it just depends on the situation.
But I can’t help but think, if one of my friends were in this situation, I would rather them come live with me. Maybe I get that from my mother. I can’t help but think that if everyone were just a little more loving of their neighbor and willing to treat friends like family, that we’d have a lot less sadness in the world.
We can’t help everyone, but we can help someone. And sometimes our neighbor is someone who could really use someone to love them like family. Jesus said love everyone. And we can only do our best when it comes to that. But I can’t help but think, he would want us to love people like family and do what we can when we can to help each other in times of need. And it sure seems like we’re getting ready to see a lot more people in times of need.
