The gift

He was one of those people you try to avoid. Needy, lonely, talkative, solicitive, always wanting to be hugged, and always smelling of cigs and sweat. He found that religious people would humor him with all of these things because they were too polite, and too afraid of looking unreligious to do otherwise. He seemed oblivious to their hypocrisy. Either that or he simply didn’t care since it was a way for him to gain the attention he needed and wanted.

He had a low IQ and a high need for adrenaline, a lethal combination. He almost drank and drove himself to death in his early 20’s and when I came to know him He was in his early 30’s with a young daughter he was trying to raise on his own, and looking much more like 60. He lost his teeth from drinking and poor personal hygiene. He had lost more jobs than teeth in the course of his young life, and was barely holding on to the one he presently had, a sand blaster for a company that made cattle feeders.

I was the new young pastor, naïve about life and eager to carry out the gospel a combination lethal to a reasonable man’s spiritual welfare. I was determined to love Romaine with everything I had. I took him to work when his truck, almost as worn as he was could not get up and go, which was often. He was always running out of money for groceries, for light bills, for gasoline, for clothes, you name it I paid for it, not the church mind you. They had given up long ago.

One of my personal rules is to not be the first to let go in a hug with someone. Romaine took that commitment right to the very edge of my endurance. He would lock me in his sweaty, smelly fierce embrace clutching me for way past that period of time deemed socially acceptable. I would grit my teeth, grip back, and hold my breath for as long as I possibly could. I was determined to somehow love this unlovely man as best as I possibly could.

One of the things I tried to do was to find someway to give him something without him asking, which was, well, impossible because he was always asking. Then one day came an opportunity. He had a birthday and hadn’t asked for anything. So I bought a birthday card and slipped $20 bucks inside. Never heard back from him at least not right away and not directly. He not only had poor hygiene he wasn’t too current on etiquette. Then I heard from an indirect source, a sort of homeless woman who was trying to freeload into his life offering him a warm spot in the bed for a roof over her head, a very usual and understandable arrangement in those circles. But she told me he had refused her offer. When I asked her why. She said that he told her that I wouldn’t want him to do it.

She had told him why should that matter. I didn’t really care about him. I was just doing my job as a pastor that was it. But he got a determined glint in his eye, and told her that she was a liar. He does too care. He marched over to the mantle in his apartment where a few cards were stacked from his birthday and pulled out a particular one. Hanging out the end was a twenty dollar bill. If he doesn’t care then why did he give me this? And he was right. Who can argue with grace.

Although we demand all kinds of things from God and often complain that He doesn’t love us. Who can argue with the fact that he gave us His son unsolicited. Now that is a gift of grace.