Author: J. Thorp

Wednesday Witness: Charity by the Numbers

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You’ve all heard the adage, “Bad things come in threes.” It seems to play out time and again—one thing leads to another and another. Of course, once the seed is planted, we look for three, and when we identify the third event, we restart the counter. Sure enough, three more catastrophes are coming if we wait long enough.

But I can’t dismiss the old wisdom entirely. In my time working with the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, I have yet to encounter a neighbor who wasn’t juggling multiple problems—a cluster of issues snowballing into a crisis.

Sometimes it’s bad luck. Sometimes, poor planning. Sometimes it’s a series of personal choices we wish they could take back. Sometimes it’s systemic—problems often seem to progress faster than solutions. And sometimes it’s generational poverty, addiction, and sin taking its toll, rippling out to touch everyone in an ever-widening circle.

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Wednesday Witness: Let Yourself Be Loved

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We are blessed to be hosting two young women from the NET team leading retreats for our St. Michael Catholic School middle-level students this week. It’s a wonderful opportunity to practice hospitality in our own home, underscoring the wisdom of the old saying, “It’s better to give than to receive.” We feel very blessed to open our home, to share our food, to visit and pray with people who are making themselves available to our daughter Lily and her classmates in such a beautiful, faith-filled way.

But the gift of giving is not what this column is about. Instead, I want to focus on the gift of receiving.

These two young women came into our home not knowing at all what to expect. We have a large and overfriendly dog and a house that comprises a wide array of half-finished renovations. We had a supper plan made independently of them. We knew nothing about them and wanted them to be comfortable, so we asked questions, provided options, and generally talked their ears off.

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Wednesday Witness: Checking the ‘Charity’ Box

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Tomorrow is Thanksgiving already, and this Sunday, Advent kicks off. Christmas, it seems, is right around the corner, and the world is already in a rush.

It’s easy this time of year to get caught up in the holiday hustle and forget those around us who don’t have basic necessities, let alone comforts and niceties. It’s easy to mean well—to intend to give to charity, then run out time and money between now and New Year’s Eve and resolve to do better next time. And with so many gift trees, food drives, and red-kettle bell-ringers, it’s easy to give little something in passing and feel good that we “did our part.”

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Wednesday Witness: Wanting What You Have

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There’s a saying I ran across somewhere:

Contentment isn’t having what you want but wanting what you have.

At the time it seemed like wisdom, and there is a grain of truth in it: The more stuff we accumulate, the more we tend to want, so getting everything you want not only doesn’t lead to contentment, but creates a self-defeating cycle of desire for bigger, better, and just MORE things.

Mostly I have made peace with not having the best of everything, and I’ve reached a point in my life at which I am trying to detach and downsize. However, as I attempt to rid myself of so much stuff, I find that I do want what I have. I want it a great deal.

For example, I have accumulated a lot of books over the years. The ones I’ve read and kept are wonderful, and although I could get them at the library if I wanted to read them again, I love my collection and struggle to decide which volumes to part with. The books I haven’t read, I keep in the earnest if foolish hope that I will find time to read them one day soon. Then, I tell myself, if I am unlikely to reread them, I can get rid of them. Why should I get rid of them now?

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Wednesday Witness: ‘You Can’t Save the World’

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This column is part of a new, weekly series on what the Lord is doing in my heart, specifically encouraging me to simplify my own life in order practice the virtue of charity and the Corporal and Spiritual Works of Mercy. Come back each Wednesday to read the latest!

I’ve always been a big-hearted and emotional fellow. As a grade-schooler, I tried to intervene when those who were littler than me (not many) were being bullied. Invariably, I took a thumping myself. But I couldn’t help it: I hurt to see others hurt.

Whenever I got wound up about some injustice or suffering, real or imaginary, Dad would say, “You can’t save the world.”

What he taught me, instead, was how to stand up for myself, to treat others with respect, and to look out for my own—my family and close friends, those whom I could count on to help take care of me.

Dad was right: I can’t save the world. I can’t even save myself. Jesus is the sole Savior of the world, and—thanks be to God—it is accomplished (John 19:30).

But I don’t think our eternal salvation is what Dad meant.

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