May 14, 2014 Dumpster diving! We saw it with our own eyes! We had gone to get gasoline at Kroger, and as we drove off, we saw two feet sticking out of an AMVET dumpster. Our first thought was ‘it’s a spoof.’ You’ve seen a car trunk with stuffed blue jeans and socks and shoes made to look like a body protruding. So we drove off. Then we stopped and went back. Just to check. It looked like a spoof until one leg crossed the other! At this, Ricky gets out of the van and walks toward the legs and feet saying, “Do you need some help?” Up popped this guy who had been down in the dumpster saying, “Oh no, I’m fine, just trying to find a pair of shoes. As we drove off I noticed on the side of the dumpster was written: Shoes, items that might help veterans. I wondered if the diver was a veteran. Call the cops or give him credit. Do those things deposited in dumpsters belong to someone and is dumpster diving a crime? You have to admit—this fellow needed shoes and was going for them. Don’t know if I should feel this way, but I do hope he found a useful pair. Anyone who reads the teachings of Jesus runs into his offerings about persistence and producing The fig tree with no figs. The shrewd manager, the lost sheep, the lady with the sick child, the other lady and the judge, and the whole Matthew 25, “Even as you did it o the least of these…”* Just this morning I read that Warren Buffet wasn’t a ‘buffet’ for his kids. When a son came asking for a loan, his dad said, “Go and get it from a bank.” He did. And later he wrote of his dad, “He could easily have written a check. But he believed that I was able to do it on my own, and that was a more valuable gift.” All too often, we want our kids to have what we didn’t, and go about getting it for them without their participation, and then we wonder whey they may not enjoy things or be motivated in life. We’ve written of it here, but when our kids were little, they would often play more with the box our gifts came in then they would with the gifts themselves. In that, they were making their own toys and entertainment. You can’t talk to a parent with a kid who has a problem without hearing them say, “I don’t know how to fix it.” And we can and should contribute ways and opportunities, but if we ‘do it’ for them, the power of their having done it for themselves is diminished, and that’s not good. Trust me, as a parent that’s much easier to write and to do. Even so, one must ask “If I do it for them, if I cover every time, if I pay when they owe,” (add you feel moved), when do they get to become free and independent souls? We are an interdependent people indeed. We need each other; we should help each other. But the old nemesis lifts its ugly head, ‘When are you helping, and when are you hindering?’ If any of you out there have that one figured, please let us know---quickly. One requirement: You have to be a parent at least once… Always love, always, Keith *I was about to look each of these passages up for you when it dawned on me that you are perfectly capable of doing that yourself!
Posted on: Wed, 14 May 2014 12:16:23 +0000
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