Today a veteran friend and I spent about four hours helping a friend from our former, now closed Catholic Church, make an emergency move. She suffers from severe pain and my veteran friend, after eleven years of military service, is having a difficult time getting SSI disability benefits for himself. I feel comfortable with people who struggle just to live and survive.
Our bowling team, Next to Normal, will bowl in the Frieden’s Pantry bowling tournament tomorrow, where we got out start last year. We have had a couple of practice sessions during the year and hope we are ready to bowl tomorrow. Tomorrow, before the bowling tournament, one of our team members and I will make some St. Vincent De Paul home visits to three families. Tomorrow night we are going to a party with our Sierra Leone friends, who are refugees from the bitter civil war over diamonds suffered in this poor country. These parties are a special time of community celebration and joy that we are blessed to be a part of.
I told my veteran friend, who is always looking for ways to survive, that our work today for our ill friend, would not be for financial pay but we would receive blessing and grace that God bestows on the ill and poor. He said okay but I still purchased him a fast food meal after we were done. But as many as our poor and ill friends he seemed to understand that serving others meant great blessings for themselves.
Jesus tells us about how the poor are blessed and how we must be like a child. Being child like, saying what I think and feel has never been hard for me but being poor and marginalized has been tough.
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