Last night as I'm getting out of my car, a woman coming down the street says, "Am I heading in the right direction for the food box?" There's a house down the street that has erected something similar to a "Little Library", except instead of books, it's for leaving nonperishable food that is free to anybody who needs it. The woman told me she had been kicked out of her house and was really hungry. I told her she was heading in the right direction and turned towards my front door when I was struck by the verse, "Whatever you do for the least of them, you have done it for me." So I turned back to her and said, "I have some lunch meat, if you would like that." She says, "Do you have a can of tuna?" This caught me somewhat off-guard, so I just said, "A can of tuna?" She says, "Yeah, a sandwich, and maybe some juice." Then before I could respond, she says, "I'll just go see what they have in the food box, and then I'll be back."
She never came back by my house, but I wondered if I should have done more to try and help her. Should I have been more insistent? Did I fulfill my moral obligation? Maybe I'm overly cynical, but my thought is that if I offer help to someone who is asking for it, and they turn it down or ask for something else, then they really must not be in need. "What would Jesus do?" is a rather trite saying, but in this case, I really do wonder what he would have done.
She never came back by my house, but I wondered if I should have done more to try and help her. Should I have been more insistent? Did I fulfill my moral obligation? Maybe I'm overly cynical, but my thought is that if I offer help to someone who is asking for it, and they turn it down or ask for something else, then they really must not be in need. "What would Jesus do?" is a rather trite saying, but in this case, I really do wonder what he would have done.
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