Wednesday, June 6, 2012

Just A Little God Story

I have become a huge Jen Hatmaker fan. Her books 7: An Experimental Mutiny Against Excess and Interrupted are not only laugh-out-loud funny but super thought-provoking, two attributes that are important to me. Jen has me thinking rather alot about what I have done/am doing/will do for "the least of these", as in Jesus said, "What you don't do for them you didn't do for me" (my rather inelegant, but correct, paraphrase).  Sure, I can reassure myself that I give regularly to certain charities/ministries/causes or be brutally honest and admit I mostly take care of me and mine. For the most part, I keep "the least of these" at the perifery of my radar because they're not really in my "comfort zone" and because when you start to go down that path, it widens into a highway with a zillion lanes and few off-ramps. Nonetheless, Jen had me wondering and making some hesitant, fairly generic inquiries, in God's direction as to just what helping "the least of these" might look like. Do I have to bring home the guy at the intersection with the the cardboard sign and the vacant look in his eyes? Should I become a regular soup-ladler at Mission Arlington? Do I need to give away my favorite jeans and most of my shoes rather than the ones that no longer fit/have some age/didn't suit me anyway?

While I, on the one hand, am striving to be a better human being, with the other I am spending hours each week idling over computer sites dreaming about how I can make my own life cushier/more profitable/less mundane (yes, I am that shallow). So I am on Pintrest, a favorite time-waster of mine,  when I see that someone is offering a free pdf for a little girl's racerback dress pattern. Yea! I like free, and it just so happens I have a small internet business selling handmade children's clothing, so of course I am quick to set about downloading this offering. In so doing, the designer mentions that she is using her pattern to make a couple of dresses to send to little girls in Africa whose families have to make hard choices like buying one dress or food for the week....a conundrum I have not had since....NEVER! Well, shoot, I can make a dress, too. That's no biggie. I've got 30 yards of dress material piled up 10 feet away, for Pete's sake! Best of all, this is beginning to smell  like a "least of these" kind of thing... yet, too easy....too "comfortable"....so maybe it's just a "co-incidence" and not actually a "God-incidence" ;-)

As I go through the channels to figure out just exactly how my little dress is actually going to make it's way to Africa, I see that this particular clothing drive is being spear-headed by a woman named Margaret who has taken this on as her Junior Women's Club project. Margaret says that she hopes she can have all donations collected by the end of May/first of June when she will be sorting and packaging  the dresses to be transported to Africa and distributed. But my eyes grow wide when I see that Margaret lives in...ta-da!...Tampa, Florida, exactly where I plan to be the last week of May! Okay! Now I am fairly certain that this has "God" written all over it, and I am blown away by the graciousness He has extended toward me as  He has orchestrated this: a task tailor-made (no pun intended) for my skill set, a task that inspired enthusiasm, rather than dread, in me, and a task that allowed me to interract with someone who would share my enthusiasm making this even more personal and special for me! What a great way to get my feet wet in the "serving-the-least-of-these-arena"! I am psyched! And I sew!



On June 2nd I make my way to Margaret's home with my 6 dresses (if one dress is good, 6 is better, right?) where this pretty, vivacious women welcomes me in to meet her young family and for a few short minutes, talking as fast as we can, we share what this experience has meant to each of us. I mention, in passing, that for me this has been a God-thing and she mentions, in passing, that she is "not particularly religious". And I think, "Good thing, because I recall Jesus had a fair amount of trouble with the "particularly religious" and a whole lot better experience with the "not...." I myself would prefer not to be labeled "religious" either, but as one who hears God and tries to obey (more or less, some of the time, and often tentatively!) And I am so-o-o-o grateful for the Margarets of this world who do what they do just because it seems right and good; I hope a lot more of them cross my path.

The donated dresses (Margaret shared that she had originally hoped to have 25 and now anticipated sending upwards of 300!) will be distributed by "Little Dresses for Africa", an organization, I understand that is completely volunteer manned and has NO budget. Yet they have sent clothing to: Burkino Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, DR of Congo, Ethiopia, The Gambia,Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, Libya, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, Sierrra Leone, Sudan, Swaziland, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, Zambia, Zanzibar, and Zimbawe.

Other countries who received them in crisis situations are: India, Haiti, Cambodia, the Philippines, Honduras, Guatamala, Nicaguara, Mexico ,and in the USA: South Dakota Indian Reservation and the Appalachian area children. Wow! Double Wow!

I am pretty sure my future "assignments" (better yet, "opportunites") to serve the least may not be quite as comfortable for me, but I am excited to see where, and to whom, He leads me next. In the meantime I am calculating how many dresses I could send on my own to "Little Dresses...", or better yet, if I got my friends or church-family together... And I love, love, love the "little God stories" I get to tell as a result! Stay tuned  :-)