YOUR NEED IS MY NEED

My wife is going to remind me that in a very short tome it will be Spring Cleaning Time around our house. Right! I mean, it’s not as if we have not cleaned out a lot of what needed to be cleaned out when we moved a year-and-a-half ago or that we have not been taking stuff we have been storing for our adult kids who have their own attics and cellars back to them. There is still more. There probably always will be.

One of the fastest growing businesses in this country is the self-storing companies that are building new facilities and expanding others. The local Macy’s is now a U-Haul renting and storing facility. Just up the road a very expensive three-story building is almost ready to accept those belongings of others that they have no room for in thier homes. Many of my neighbors don’t park their cars in their two-car garage because the garage is already loaded with stuff.

We all seem to have much more than we need. That’s why SCT is good, good for us and good for others. Last year at this time daughter Tracy was into SCT. While she was cleaning out a closet, Carter came up to her with some toys. He told her that she could take them to Goodwill because he didn’t need them anymore and knew that there were other kids who could use them and love them as much as he had.

The needs of some children were being met by Carter’s need to share with others, give away actually, what he didn’t need any more because he had outgrown those toys. Somehow Carter realized what I/we often seem to forget. It is not so much that we realize how blessed we are, that we have way more than we actually need. Rather it is when we recognize a need, whatever that need, it is a reminder that that need needs to be attended to by me as best I can, somehow in some way. Your need is my need.

The needs of others, real needs, are many and impossible to be met by any one person or society. But because the magnitude of those needs are so great does not mean we get a pass from doing the best we can to help those we can when we can. Carter in his small and unselfish way was doing what he could do to make life more enjoyable for someone he would never meet but who would be thankful for his kindness and generosity.

For me SCT is a yearly reminder of how blessed I am, that I have more than I will ever need and that I need to ask myself if I am doing what I can to help those in need. Yes, taking all that stuff to Goodwill or some other organization like that is a starter, but only that. There is always more to be done, more needs to be met. Given human nature there always will be.

It’s easy, of course, to turn a blind eye to the needs of others, to blame them for the situations they are in. The truth, however, in all honesty and in all thankfulness for my blessings, is that but for the grace of God go I.