“I will offer to you a thanksgiving sacrifice and call on the name of the Lord.” (Psalm 116.17 NRSV) I thought I heard someone knocking on our back door, yet when I peered out the kitchen window I saw no one. Then I heard it again, no louder, no more insistent, just a tapping. Heading out of the kitchen to the back door, I wondered who it was that would be at our door at this hour of the night the evening before we were scheduled to leave for a couple of days. Just as I reached for the doorknob my glance out the windows of the door revealed the answer to my question, it was Alonzo Williams. Opening the door and welcoming Alonzo into our home, I noticed that Alonzo was carrying a brown grocery sack, the top of which was neatly creased and folded down two or three times. Alonzo said in his most humble and lowly manner, “Pastor, I know you and the missus is leaving for a couple of days and I know how it is with kids in the car. I just brought you a couple of things to help feed those hungry mouths while you are on the road. ‘Tain’t much, but I know it will help.” Unfolding the top of the bag, I gazed inside and was astonished at what I saw: two small containers of ‘store-bought’ cookies and four apples. Looking from gift to giver words failed me. I knew Alonzo didn’t have much and that what he had barely covered his own expenses yet, there in the bag now trembling in my hands was a treasure of love. I gathered Alonzo in my arms, hugged the stuffing out of him and, finally, found the words to thank him for such a generous, thoughtful, heartfelt blessing in our lives. He understood our plight . . . Alonzo, much wiser than most who had more than they could use, identified with what it was to not have much at all and, in the only way he could, met the need before it became an issue for us on the road. Out of his poverty he gave us riches. Out of his heart he gave us faith. Out of his soul he gave us love . . . all in the gift of store-bought cookies and apples. You had to know Alonzo to appreciate how powerfully profound this moment, how sacred his offering, how humbly he set the gift in my hands . . . and you had to know Alonzo to savor the sight of this slightly hunched-over child of God holding his hat with both hands, hardly daring to look me in the eye for fear the gift wouldn’t be enough or that it might be rejected, but I would have none of that and embraced him once more before he moved to the door and, upon wishing us a safe trip, re-entered the darkness of the night that he might head home. The older I become, the longer I am in ministry, the more I am coming to understand that, nearly without fail, those who have the least are more likely to be generous, those who are the busiest are more likely to give you time, those who have lost the most are more likely to stand with you in your loss, those who have been humiliated are more likely to keep you from humiliation, and those who know what it is to be disdained or marginalized are the most likely to include you in their lives. Perhaps it is because they find themselves less possessed by their possessions. Perhaps it is because they know the value of a moment well spent. Perhaps it is because they perceive the power of community to overcome brokenness. Perhaps it is because they do not need recognition to know they have a place. Perhaps it is because they know and want to share the sense of family beyond someone else’s measure. Or maybe, just maybe, like Alonzo, all that they truly know is precisely how blessed of God they are and desire nothing more than to share all their blessings. I am not sure. Yet of this I am certain: Alonzo, and all the Alonzo’s of the world, will be the first into the Kingdom if for no other reason than they, first, have lived the Kingdom all of their days. Their very lives are a sacrifice of thanksgiving, set at the feet of God, in all that they are . . . and we are the privileged witnesses and recipients of their continual sanctified chorus, “Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Hosts!”, made manifest even, especially, in the humble knocking of Christ, Alonzo, at our door. Alonzo died shortly after this late night encounter and, in preparing for his Service of Thanksgiving for Life, my life was forever transformed, again, by his. You see, I learned from his family that Alonzo spent a lifetime washing dishes at the Culver Military Academy, beginning long before he might have ever completed any formal education and, in that time, on dishwasher’s wages, paid in full the college tuition for a brother to become a lawyer, a sister to become a doctor, and another brother a CPA. You would have never known it to know Alonzo but, then, those who save the most people among us often appear as the least in our culture, don’t they? Thank you, Jesus, for Alonzo . . . and for the example You set – and He followed. I only pray I can mirror your, and his, giving spirit of thanksgiving in all of life. God grant me such a lavish soul for you!
Posted on: Thu, 23 Oct 2014 13:53:09 +0000
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