We made some new friends a month or so ago that own the new “Muletown Coffee” shop in Columbia. One of them, Chris, along with his wife Brittany, brought us dinner tonight. He had called me a few days ago and said “we’d like to bring you a meal this week if that’s okay… I know you guys have been through a lot with the new baby’s birth and we thought one-less meal for Joey to have to cook might be a good thing?” I wasn’t sure how to answer him. No one had ever brought dinner to us before. It seemed like something they did years ago, on tv, or in movies… I didn’t know people still did that. I almost said “that’s okay, you don’t have to do that.” But instead, I just said, “that’d be great Chris, thanks so much for thinking of us.”
They have a newborn also. She’s seven weeks old, and sweet as she can be. They got here to the house about 6 pm, and though they had planned to just drop the meal off and leave, we talked them into staying and eating the dinner with us. It was a wonderful meal. When it was through, the girls went in the back room and breastfed the babies (that sounds funny just writing it) in rocking chairs next to each other, and Chris and I sat in the living room for more than an hour and talked about life and our pasts and our futures and about faith. He has a beautiful take on what “sincere” faith looks like to him. It’s going against the urge to serve yourself and instead finding someone else to serve. It’s looking every day for some way to bless someone, whether you know them or not. For him, it’s not so much about studying, or praying… as it is about doing. I love that. I’ve been thinking the same way for a while now and working to fight that battle most days myself. Most times, not very successfully. My selfish nature wants it to be all about me. About what I want and what I need. It tells me not to worry about others, they’ll be fine. It seeks to hold the light that’s in me up to a mirror, so that it can reflect back to me, and not shine on others. Chris’s stories of his small victories of serving others, even when he doesn’t want to, inspires me.
I hope Joey and I think, and act, to bring a meal to someone’s home in the future when they could use a break from cooking. Tonight our new friends brought us a meal to fill our stomachs, but it was our hearts that were full when they left.
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