by Joe Christian

Created on: November 20, 2008   Last Updated: January 21, 2009

Don't Be Such a Drain on Others! Unless You Really Think You Must?

As Christians we are supposed to be imparting life to others, not sucking the life out of them! I don't really know what I am talking about, but it sounds good doesn't it aye?

But I do think about how struggling clergy people and ministries and churches that need support and do not have it campaign to raise the funds they need to keep operating and to do what their own mission statements profess that they are about and why they exist as ministries and non-profits; and struggling to do what they are organized to do is already draining on them, when they really want to be about their "Father's business"?

When I was trying to keep my own ministry vehicle' operating so that I could keep getting about and ministering as God has called me to do, and I would let people know my need and someone or some people would pay the repair costs (sometimes I even qualified for city social funds to get the repairs made!), to keep my vehicle going. But now my ministry vehicle' is not more! Really is has gone to that "Brother Patrick" guy who helps feed the homeless and hungry downtown through Catholic Charities, and then he uses it to get out and about and do things on his day off around and out of town as well, but its no longer mine and I miss it so much that I dream that I am driving it somewhere and then wake up feeling a sense of loss and grieving a bit about not having it anymore.

I was thinking though, the last time that it needed repaired and was parked in the back, that I am in the city proper now where we have all these mass transit busses like other cities have busses and subways and other people trains', and there are cabs around town as well? So why should I keep being a drain' to others in regard to the needs and expenses of my ministry vehicle'? So why it was broken down, I took it off the street and parked it in back of the house and purchased a monthly transit pass and was doing that for a few weeks and had not gotten any repairs done and there were no funds in sight to repair it this time, and I was tired of the costs and of being a drain' on others about it, to I purchased two For Sale signs and placed them on it, having never sold anything before but always simply gave vehicles and everything else away, except for a VCR that my then girlfriend made me sell years and years ago (in the 90's), when I had purchased a new VCR (remember VCRs?); and "Brother Patrick" saw the signs, stopped by and offered to pay the price to purchase it and with his own income repairing it, he said, would be no problem for him, and I felt a sense of grief in my heart about the whole matter while he and I would talking selling it to him anyway, and he has gotten it all nicely repaired and when I am out going somewhere walking or at a bus stop, I sometimes see him happily driving on by! Or sometimes I see him driving by right up the street and making no sad in need repair sounds, when I am simply looking out one of my windows that look out onto the street in front!

When I am downtown though, just doing all those things that I could not do when I was crippled from illness and getting worse and had not gotten healed at the healing hour at Church yet, the Trinity Sunday before last, at the downtown Cathedral; and I think that now if my life and everything I do now takes place downtown and I have nothing heavy to transport, as an urban dweller, all will be well! If I lived in New York it would be the same way for me, or Chicago, or London, or Paris, or San Francisco; wouldn't it be so?

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