No Expectations, Only Love

Today, I found myself interviewing people who had come to get food from our food pantry. I love to socialize with people and learn about their lives so I had asked my director if I could do interviews for a day. The people come into our gym and sit in the chairs that we have set up for them to wait on their name to be called at their appointment time. After they have checked in at the main desk then they can be called over to the interview desks. My center's director, Mrs. Dora, AKA one of the sweetest ladies in the WHOLE world! sat at one of these desks and I sat at the other. Mrs. Dora who lived the first couple of decades in Mexico is naturally fluent in Spanish. Over the last thirty years she has perfected her English as well. How valuable it is to be bilingual! So, there I sat for all practical purposes monolingual. I do know a very modest amount of Spanish but not enough to be confident in sharing the Gospel with our beloved community. So as each person checks in at the main desk, I would ask them if they spoke English. Most of them did not and I would tell them to wait for Mrs. Dora so that they could interview in Spanish. Eventually I would come to a person on the list who could either speak English or had one of their children who could translate for them. Often times the Hispanic ladies who told me they could speak English were actually stretching the truth. However, by the grace of God, I was able to recall words and phrases so that we could communicate. 

I think that I will remember one particular interview that I had today for a very long time. I had a upper middle age African American couple at my desk and was talking to them. I was thinking in my head How am I going to be able to bring Jesus into this if they keep being so close lipped? The wife was acting scared to talk about Jesus because her husband was there. The husband was just sitting and looking around. Then, out of nowhere. I have no idea what cued this other than God himself, the husband started into not really a rant but maybe better described as a spiel. He told me about how for a long time he and his wife had been looking for a church. Apparently they had been going to this one church that had brought them food during the week once a month. They would attend on Sunday but didn't feel as if they were fully accepted. He felt that the  rich white people as he described them excluded him and his wife. He had other friends from the streets as well that had felt the same about their reception at the church. I wonder how many times I myself have excluded people that are not the same as me in church. What a travesty! 

However, it was the second part of his impassioned little speech that was most poignant. He said that when the people brought the food to his house, they would say things that made him feel obligated to attend their church. This man said that he didn't like feeling like he was being bought to attend church. 

I don't know what actually happened because I wasn't there. How often though do we do service and mission projects with the thought that if we do this then they might come to our church. If we give them this then they might accept Jesus. This man was simply looking for love. The reason why we should do missions, outreach and service is love. We should not expect anything in return. 

God first loved us and doesn't expect anything in return. He loved just to love and we should too.