His name is Johnny

He’s a panhandler.  I don’t really know much about him from a personal standpoint, but I know inside.  I have seen his lack of honesty, his lack of integrity, his lack of social grace.  In the beginning, Johnny showed up occasionally and asked for us to hire him to do odd jobs.  My husband would put him to work and give him $20 or $50 bucks for very little ‘work’ very poorly done.  

One time we were getting ready to leave when he showed up.  My husband took him around back and showed him some trees that needed planting and where they needed to go.   He gave him the money and we went our way.  When we came back, Louis went to inspect the handiwork.  He came in and said, “You’ve got to see this.”  Johnny dug one big hole, and set a tree, pot and all, into the hole. 

Once he showed up with his sister and her children needing a fair amount of money.  I was redoing my front patio and cleaning out my sunroom for the seasonal change.  So my husband told them to move all the rocks and stack them on the driveway and then had them move all the plants from my sunroom out onto the parking pad.  That was a fiasco for the most part.  The kids were trying to move rocks that were too large for them, trying to throw rocks from the patio to the driveway.  One of the kids hit his mom with a rock.  They dropped and spilled the potted plants.  But they did clear most of the patio and sunroom and my husband finally told them they were done, gave them some money and sent them on their way. 

A couple of days later they all showed up again and needed money because Johnny burned himself while cooking breakfast and didn’t have enough for the antibiotics and pain prescription that they issued at the emergency room.  I had heard them arrive and watched them come up to the door from my study.  Neither seemed in pain or physically hampered in any way.  The arm had a dirty, badly applied gauze bandage which covered “the horrid wound.”  I agreed to give them a very small part of what they asked for just to get rid of them without vocalizing my doubts that the arm was doctored in an emergency room.  At that point, the sister began limping badly and stated that she had been injured the Saturday before working on our property and really needed to see a doctor herself.  I’m fairly non-confrontational up to a point.  That was the point that ended my compliant benevolence.  I told them to leave and if I saw them again, I would call the police and have them removed for trespassing.

Johnny had started showing up when Louis wasn’t home a year or so after we began ‘paying’ him to do odd jobs.  He needed money, he needed a ride, he was hungry.  That was a time when I was being tested and purified in my benevolent giving.  There were times when I sent him off with an excuse.  Other times I gave him money I didn’t really have to spare just to get rid of him.  I would give him a bottle of cold water on a hot day.  Once I gave him bus fare when he asked for cab fare because there is a bus stop close to my home.

I’ve always been a giver.  My father taught me to tithe my allowance as a child and it felt good.  When I began babysitting, I carefully calculated what I ‘owed’ God based on one tenth.  I will put a dollar or a hand full of coins in every red kettle I see at Christmas time.  I’ve had my heart strings pulled many times.  I married a man whose spiritual gift seems to be benevolence without reserve.  At times he has amazed me with wisdom and at times not so much.  But in the past several years, God has been changing the way I think of giving.  I am learning to ask.  I am learning to be honest when I don’t give.  I am learning to present the gift as God’s emissary.  Sometimes I give when I don’t want to.  Sometimes I am filled with joy at the opportunity.  Sometimes I am not released to give.  It’s not as hard as it sounds or at least as it sounded to me in the beginning.

I have learned that it is my obedience not the return or gratitude that makes giving make sense.  I have learned to turn loose of it when I turn loose of it.  I give because it is right at that moment in that instant.  Once I give it is no longer mine to do with.  If I have trusted God in my giving, I must also trust him with the outcome of my giving.

And so the other day I found myself looking through the glass in my door at Johnny.  His first word was “I have a job now,” and then he pointed out that he had even cleaned up and cut his hair.  I might have thought “So what?” because it was obvious he was here to beg.  But something inside felt proud that he cared to say that to me.  He went on with his story: “If I don’t pay $..... on my electric bill they’re going to shut it off.  I was able to pay most of it, but I have to have $30 more and I’ve gotten 12 dollars so far today.  Can I do something to earn at least part of it?  It has to be fast, because I have to get it paid today.”

I said “Wait here,” and walked into the house.  “Father?”  I questioned and received what I needed to know that quickly.  I pulled out two tens.  God said, “Give him 18.”  I hunted and came up with $18.

As I handed him the money, he said, “I get paid on Friday.  I will bring it back.”  I knew what my answer should be.

“Give it to someone else that really needs it.  It is a gift from God.  That’s how he wants it repaid.”  Johnny looked at me steadily for a minute or so, straight in the eye.  “Yes ma’am.  I will.”

I must leave the truth of what is done to the one who instructed me.  I know the whole ‘pay it forward’ concept, but this wasn’t really that at all.  Because as he walked away, I felt God saying, “When he learns to give, it will do him more good than anything he has ever received.”  And I knew God wasn’t just talking about a willingness to transfer money to another person’s hand.  I knew that what God was saying applied as much to me as to Johnny.  Learning to respond to the Father’s desire is far more beneficial than $18 in your hand when you need to pay a bill.  It is what makes you truly successful and blessed.