I feel like a number.
To the government you are a number. You are a combination of social security numbers, addresses, bank account numbers, identification numbers, and zip codes, among others. Your name might be included on official correspondence but its there just for fill-in-the -blank purposes only. It makes me giggle when people get so upset about voter ID because you can't interact with the government without them checking your identification to see if you are really you. Usually taking two different forms of ID to make sure. But it's the actuality of that number representing all you are that's demeaning. I'm a number to MS. I'm a number to the US gov't. I'm a number to Deere. I'm a number to SSA. Like Bob Seger said so many years ago, "I feel like a number, Feel like a number, Feel like a stranger, a stranger in this land".
We took a group to Hattiesburg Saturday to help with the clean-up, which is a daunting task when viewed in person. I had called a high school friend of mine, Phil Carlos Wilson, who pastors the Ebenezer Baptist Church near the affected area. He led us to the headquarters of the cleanup where we were given a briefing, an address, and a bracelet with a number on it. I suppose this number identified us to the cleanup group in case we became incapacitated. Maybe they were just using them to capture the number of volunteers that had shown up. I really don't know. It really didn't cross my mind once we got a close up view of the destruction. It was really my intention to volunteer our service to a local group upon whom I could count to get us to where the most need was and not just be a statistic.
When you go to help without expectation of anything in return you become more than a number. You become a pair of hand to remove rubbish and destruction. You become a hug and a smile to those who need a ray of light. You become a pair of feet moving stuff out of destroyed houses. You become the voice that says we love and care for you. You become so much more than you could be as yourself. I'm not talking superhero stuff but ordinary human transformed into Christ for those who are in need. You are taken away from the things of this world and given the joy that only comes through selflessness.
How much of yourself do you give? I see and feel the busyness inside and around me. We are all full of things we want to do, and feel the need to do, but just can't seem to find the time to do them. Working with young people makes me wonder what lessons that I'm passing on to them. I am completely aware of the ones that I speak each week from bible stories, personal experiences, and things about life as we know it now, but I'm talking about the lessons that they see happening in my life. You know the ones where they observe how we act when people are in anguish. The ones where they see where we spend our time. The ones where we spend our money. The ones where we love our neighbors like the Good Samaritan. Not the ones where we talk about giving for 45 minutes and never practice it ourselves. We continually have opportunities to help the helpless, to get away from being just a number, to be a stranger in this land. Until next week. ags
