It was time for a check today, to the East Texas Food Bank, for their Thanksgiving drive. There'll be one to the Matthew 25:35 Fund, too. We don't always "see" the poverty all around us, but it's there. Like the rest of God's creation, there are inspiring stories within the poverty, missed when we turn away from it.
The picture is indelible, implanted in Bullard when I was ten, only revised a little as I became a teen. I took a birthday present across the street to Uncle Stout Roberson, on his 90th birthday. Just like every day, he was in his garden, working whatever crop was in season. Even in winter he had some protected crops working.
His name fit. He had worked with hand tools every day of his life, so, at 90, he was pretty much all muscle, tendon, and bone. With a great attitude! Couldn't hear, couldn't afford a hearing aid, so everyone had to shout a bit, but that was fine. And he always had a good word for you.
I admired him. But it never occurred to me that Uncle Stout had a hard life. Before Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, just a little of what he called the "old age assistance", Uncle Stout HAD to work every day. Corn and potatoes, beans and peas, lots of turnips and greens, and the priceless chickens kept him alive, and made sure that Miss Viola didn't do without. He gave things away, people gave him things, and sharing was just a part of the good life among good (and poor) Christian people.
Then the time came when no amount of will power was enough to drive him into the garden. He could say with Paul, "I have fought the good fight..." because he had. He defined the "honorable man", and in some ways still does. I've not known a better one, in all the decades since.
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