He Keeps coming Back
Written By: Shanna Choate
**For other content written by Shanna, visit her blog at The Heart of a Farm Girl.
Scooby kind of bugs me.
He’s shifty, and I don’t really trust him.
He doesn’t make eye contact with me. He will grunt a word at me…if he has to.
If I run into him on the streets hanging with with people we serve frequently, he stands off to the side and watches me out of the corner of his eye. If I’m honest, I don’t really LIKE Scooby.
He showed up to church again on Sunday.
And then, as soon as the service started, he left.
It’s his normal routine…to get a ride into town from the shelter to church, and then leave to get drunk. This week, he came back to church just as my husband Ray was arriving from returning people to the shelter. We had just finished cleaning everything up and were trying to get out of there so we could go home and chill before our evening activities began. But, Scooby had brought people back with him and they were hungry.
Drunk and confused, he didn’t understand how he had missed dinner. He had just left for a few…he thought.
My friend, Mirjam and I filled bags with granola bars, chips and waters and passed them out. Ray, Allen and Mirjam stayed outside to chat with the group, and I headed back into the church. Scooby stopped me.
He looked at me and asked if he could get a coat, because his hoodie wasn’t warm enough. I said I’d go see what we had. Begrudgingly, I headed up the two flights of stairs, and went through the rack to find him something. I found something that I thought would fit and took it out to him. He tried it on, was pleased that it fit and thanked me. Then, asked for a pair of gloves, too.
“As I plodded back up all of the stairs, I said to myself, “WHY is he asking ME to help him?!” And then I mumbled to God, “OK, fine…I will serve Scooby.”
I got the gloves, ran them out to Scooby, and KINDLY handed them to him. He was thrilled, and once again, he looked at me and thanked me.
As we drove home, I wondered if maybe I was the problem all along. Maybe Scooby didn’t trust ME. Maybe my caution had put up a wall that made me seem cold and indifferent. Maybe, the fact that I decided that I didn’t like him was apparent in the way I communicated with him.
The God-Wink in all of this…Saturday, as I was out shopping, I went to get into my car in the Walmart parking lot, and there at my feet, was a dirty tails-up penny (if you haven’t read my penny story, you can find it here). I always pick them up as a reminder that EVERYONE matters, and wonder who God might send my way next.
Sunday, God sent Scooby, and I didn’t even see it. I almost missed it.
I was so willing to pick up that dirty, unlucky penny in a disgusting parking lot on Saturday, but on Sunday I was almost unwilling to serve the very person all of those pennies remind me of.
Today I’m praying that, like a bad penny, he keeps coming back, and that next time he does, he sees the love of Jesus in me.
