The Perfect Storm

Does anyone ever feel like Murphy has taken over and anything that could happen does happen, and it all seems to happen at once. Well, that is what yesterday morning felt like. We are always saying to expected the unexpected and if it could happen, it probably will. That I would say describes what our experience was yesterday in our Sunday Servants Bible Study. It began really like any other Sunday morning. I arrived in the class to be greeted by some of our guys, such as Melvin, Gene, Debbie, Gary, and many others. The coffee was almost ready to be made. That is, Debbie had put the water in in order to help out and so all I had to do was put in the filter, the coffee, and push start. Once the coffee had been made, I refocused my attention onto how many donut holes each participant was taking. We have a limit of two per person. Tina and Sharon had both already arrived in the room and were greeting everyone as well. We then had a new person arrive named Jeremy. He seemed to be quit intimidated by all of the people and so Sharon began speaking with his aunt and introduced me to them both. As we were speaking with them, another one of our participants in a split moment, became ill. It was so all of a sudden and the look on his face was instant fear. He was apologetic and couldn't believe himself what had just happened. Suzy who was sitting next to him although didn't catch much, did catch enough to where we had her take off her jacket. Everyone at his point was amazingly calm and Judah being the person he is, stepped in and began helping with the clean up, and right away, Arturo offered to help as well. It was like some of them although are considered participants, are also amazing volunteers at the same time and willing to do anything to just be of service, even more so than some of the actual volunteers. I then had moved out of the room in order to phone Anthony's care provider and facilities. Things seemed to calm down if only for a moment, because then arrived Andrew, our 17 year old autistic boy. Now, this would not have been such a hectic thing except as I was on the phone speaking with Anthony's care provider, the person Jeremy and his aunt were still at the entrance of the room and so Sharon had refocused her attention on reassuring Jeremy that everything would be ok. And then, within just a blink of an eye, Tina quickly noticed that Andrew had made a bee line into the classroom and quickly made his way to the box of donut holes. She yelled out, "Andrew is at the donuts". Sharon and I both looked over and already Andrew had more donut holes in his mouth than we could count. I mean "WOW"!!!! Another intense moment. Sharon without even thinking, quickly ran over to Andrew and grabbing him by his sweatshirt, was able to pull him away from the donuts and get him back out into the plex. At that point, my phone conversation with Anthony's care provider had finally ended, I was able to phone facilities to come and help finish cleaning what we were unable to, and Sharon and I then were able to completely focus our attention on Andrew. It was probably about 9:30 by this time and all of this had taken place within maybe about 10 minutes. It was a pretty crazy morning but all in all, Anthony was picked up by his care provider and taken home to rest, the mess was cleaned, the bible lesson taught to the rest of the class, and Sharon and I had a pretty surprising easy rest of the time with Andrew. Now, after reading all of this, some might wonder how it is we do what we do and completely enjoy it all from start to finish. Well, for me it is easy, Jesus said that anything we do for the least of these you did for me, and anything that you did not do for the least of these, you did not do for me. Now, the one thing that I believe many get confused about, is the context of what the "least" means. We do not in any way consider our guys to be even remotely less than any one of us. We are completely equal with them. We all just have different abilities. Therefore, they are much like children in the since that as a child is unable to independently care for themselves, so are our guys, and because of that, it is our responsibility to do for them as we would for a child. And when we seek to serve, we are blessed, because in the grand scheme of things, when we give and when we serve unselfishly, even in the midst of challenges such as these, we are doing it all ultimately for the Lord, and that I believe is what keeps us coming back. The smiles, the joy, and the blessings that Christ allows us to have in season and out of season, in the good times, and even while in the midst of the "Perfect Storm".