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I'm world famous... Whoooo-Hoooo! You'd be amazed how many people find my site searching for "Toronto bird watching." In less self-congratulatory news, the illness that I've been fighting has finally been kicked to the curb...mostly. I'm still coughing, but the fever and chills are gone. Now I'm in that annoying stage, when you want to cough but can't get a purchase on the back of your throat. All tickle, no gobs of phlegm. I hope you weren't eating ice cream just then. Sorry. I've made a paper chain, the kind that kids make to countdown to Christmas. Mine is a countdown of breakfast ministry mornings. Ten more 3:00 a.m. wake-ups to go. It's not that I dislike helping out...I do. It's the waking up that I can do without. That and waiting in the cold for a streetcar. Poor me. The people who come to eat have been waiting in the cold for food. I have a cross that I wear every day. My mum gave me a very nice one that I wear on Sundays and whatnot, but for everyday I have a pewter cross on a string. I usually wear it under my shirt, but when I'm serving at the breakfast ministry I pull it out. I do this mainly to remind myself...I'm not serving breakfast because I'm a nice guy. To tell the truth, it's not me doing it at all. Aaron doesn't wake up at 3:00 a.m., and he certainly doesn't trek across the city to a dodgy neighbourhood to make breakfast for the homeless. I'd like to say otherwise, but no...I'm not that good a person. It's not me doing it, it's Christ doing it through and in me. If anything, I'm the unwilling recipient of a much-needed lesson in the proper use of creation - the food we serve is not ours. It's not ours personally and it doesn't belong to St. Bart's. The food we serve belongs, as all things belong, to God. All we are is the conduit that brings God's food to God's people. I'm no more the author or agent of giving than is the ladle with which I dish up the food. I'm just the instrument...an instrument that, at 3:00 a.m., would rather be left in the drawer. So I suppose I wear the cross to deflect two sorts of praise - mine and that of the people who come to St. Bart's for breakfast. Sometimes they thank us, tell us we're doing a good thing. Sometimes I start to feel that way about myself. I think it's healthy to remember that the good that's being done is being done by Christ. I'm just along for the ride. |
