Significant Matters

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There are long stretches of endless grasslands and open plains in the Transkei region of South Africa. Road trips in this part of the world were made for random reflections and candid conversations. On one such occasion a group of five of us from the US and South Africa were sharing stories of our efforts and experiences among the endless poor and ever dying in this remarkable country.

We were talking about things like AIDS and orphanage work when a young lady shared a story about a man she had met in a clothing effort they had done the previous week. He was looking over a pile of shoes when she decided to see if she could help. “What size do you wear?” she asked. Without looking up he merely said, “A poor man has no sizes.”

His response gripped me; poignant and profoundly true at so many levels. “A poor man has no sizes.” I suppose it’s another way of saying, “Beggars can’t be choosy.” Or is it? How can a person, any person have no size? As surely as I am a size eight, this man has a size. No matter how poor or disenfranchised he has a size. The poor have sizes if we will but take the time to measure.

How does one get to such a point? To become so unimportant and non-descript as to think yourself undeserving of a pair of cast off shoes that actually fit? Poverty has a way of stripping a person of more than the economic means to survive in this world but of their God-given dignity as well. I’ve seen it in the once proud faces of men standing in food lines in Beirut, Lebanon as well as the homeless in our own downtown area. “A poor man has no sizes.”

It reminded me that the greater work of any form of benevolence is the preservation or, in many cases, the restoration of a person’s dignity. To give in such a way that those who receive feel themselves the equal to those who do the giving. To live and serve in the ever mindful awareness of, “there but for the grace of God go I.” That kind of giving and serving insists on knowing a man’s shoe size, anything less would simply miss the mark.

One of the reasons I so love Christmas is because of its inherent benevolence that has a way of taking on a collective form. Dicken’s captured it all so well in his classic; A Christmas Carol. I am struck anew every time I read those words of Jacob Marley when he confronts his old business partner, Ebeneezer Scrooge in the opening part of the story. “’Business!’ cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. ‘Mankind was my business, the common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance and benevolence, were, all my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!’”

It’s good to be reminded that mankind is our business, especially the poor. Our work here at Significant Matters is to do all we can to connect those who want to help with those who want help in order to see lives changed and communities transformed. If the poor are indeed our business then our first act of service may very well be helping them know their shoe size.

Love with reckless abandon, give with unbridled extravagance and have a Merry Christmas!

Tom Bassford

There’s a story Attributed to Loren Eisley while writing his book “The Unexpected Universe.” It’s about a little boy walking along the water's edge of a beautiful sandy beach in the tropics, a beach strewn with what appears to be countless starfish washed ashore in a storm. Abandoned by the ocean, they were doomed to die. Perhaps you know this story.

For several days, as a man took his morning walk on the beach, he'd notice a little boy picking up one starfish after another, tossing it into the ocean.  After watching this for several days, the man asked the boy, "Why are you tossing the starfish back? There are millions; what you're doing can't possibly make any difference."

The boy picked up another starfish, tossed it into the ocean and said, with a big grin, "It made a difference to that one."

When I look at all the needs that I see every day in this world I could easily become overwhelmed and settle into a defeatist attitude, “why try?” But I’ve held Pela, an AIDS orphan, in my arms and prayed with Mama Gladys, the South African woman who cares for Pela in the Oceans of Mercy orphanage we work with. What we do has made a difference to that one.

I’ve had the privilege of helping a successful business man start a school scholarship program for Philippine children in an out of the way village named Mamoot. What we do has made a difference for 37 of them.

There are plenty of people homeless and many more who struggle to experience the American dream of owning a home. We can’t help them all but through the efforts of a banker, a realtor, a builder and a social worker we’ve helped one family with a hand-up.  What we do has made a difference for that family.

Jesus said that we will always have the poor with us. I don’t think He was being a pessimist, I think He was trying to give us perspective. We can’t let what we can’t do keep us from doing what we can do. At Significant Matters we’re committed to do all that we can do to help as many as we can do all that they can to make a difference.

Ours is a ministry of mobilizing and motivating people to figure out where and to what God has called them to serve. The more we succeed in our mission the more other ministries succeed in their mission to see lives changed and communities transformed for the glory of God and the good of others.

Blessings!

Tom Bassford
Executive Director
Significant Matters