Mat 22:37 Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.
Mat 22:38 This is the first and great commandment.
Mat 22:39 And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
On Monday morning we woke up to find that we had no water pressure in our house- AGAIN- for the FOURTH time in only 8 months.
A quick survey of the outside (and inside) of the house showed nothing wrong, so my husband set off on foot to ask the neighbors if they had water.
It turned out that the entire trailer park was without water.
(It wasn’t just our house this time- as it had been the last three times!)
So I called the park owner.
She informed me that the power to the well had been erroneously shut off by Duke Energy- and that it would not be back on until midnight! (They can surely shut it off in a hurry- but then they can also take their sweet time about turning it back on again!)
So we called mom, who lives across the street from us, and we all decided to go out for the day and enjoy doing some frivolous things that we could not do with our water shut off- such as eating; and enjoying other precious commodities- like a flushing toilet!
We left the house in the early afternoon and started out our day on the road by going to Little Caesar’s (which is located inside our local K-Mart store) to get a 5.00 pizza- which we used to eat on Saturdays when we were done preaching at a local nursing home, and which would feed all three of us. But by the time we got there, we were all so hungry that we decided to splurge and get TWO pizzas instead of one.
NOTE: all three of us have been eating healthy foods since Aug- and pizza is definitely NOT one of our healthy choices. However, when faced with the choice of not eating at all until midnight (since ALL of our healthy food at home requires water to prepare!) or eating pizza, we opted for the latter.
Well, they were having a special deal, which we were unaware of until we picked up our food at the counter and saw some extra items along with the pizzas.
We ate the extra food first and then tackled the pizzas. But by the time we had finished the first one, we all realized that we were not going to be able to finish both of them, so we looked around to see who we could share the leftovers with.
(The same thing had happened to us last spring, and we actually had a difficult time giving away FREE pizza.) People are SOOO suspicious of strangers today- especially those who are offering them free food!
Mom saw a little boy sitting by himself at a table in the corner, so she suggested that I go ask him if he would like our leftover pizza. He and a little girl- probably his sister- had been hanging around the pizza place for a while, looking longingly at the food. We figured that their mom was shopping in the store somewhere and they were waiting for her in the food area.
So I went over to him and asked him if he would like some pizza that we couldn’t eat and didn’t want to throw away. He smiled from ear to ear and nodded his head. Then I went back to our table and brought him the box with the leftovers in it.
He quite cautiously opened the box and peeked inside, then quickly closed the lid. The little girl- who had gone to the bathroom- reappeared and they BOTH looked at the pizza again. A few minutes later a woman came over to where the children were sitting and they showed her the pizza, pointed at us, and left the store- with the little boy smiling and proudly carrying the pizza box with both hands.
A woman who was sitting behind us smiled at me as I walked back to our table. “That was very nice of you”, she said. I thanked her for the compliment, chatted with her for a few moments about how sad it is that people are so selfish these days, and then we left to go shopping in the store.
That entire incident- which was no big deal to us at all (since we do things like that all the time) made us realize that people are watching us. And as Christians, what kind of an example are we setting before the world?
Is it one of love for our neighbor, as Jesus commands us do to in the above scripture? Is it one of compassion for those in need?
Or is it rather one of thoughtlessness and selfishness- as we all too often sadly see in today’s world?
Let’s all purpose in our hearts to try to help those in need. After all- we may be the one in need someday. And wouldn’t we love it if a total stranger helped us?
By the way- we received a phone call at 9:00 pm on Monday night (on our cell phone) from a neighbor who told us, “The water is on, you can come home now!”
PRAISE GOD!! Another prayer answered. We didn’t have to wait until midnight to have water.
May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all.