"Unless you become like this child..."

A lesson in kindness and humility yesterday.

Last week, a young lady from the parish dropped off a number of bag lunches to the parish office, intended for the four of us (Priests).  In each bag was a sandwich, a drink, yogurt, an apple, and some snacks. None of us was there to thank her, and we assumed she was doing it for either a service project for the Girl Scouts, or as a Lenten sacrifice.  My pastor sent the girl and her family a thank you on behalf of the four of us.  Yesterday, the girl and her family returned with more bag lunches for us.  These had sandwiches, tuna salad and crackers, bags of mixed nuts, more apples, chocolate, etc.  This time we got the chance to talk to her and thank her.

Want to know why she was making the meals?

A few days before, she heard a conversation with one of the Priests here in the parish.  Someone must've asked him about rectory life, and he mentioned that "We have one meal a day, and the rest of the time we're on our own."  Yes, this is true: the four of us eat lunch together every day (schedules permitting).  But other meals are had whenever we can squeeze it in, usually depending on our individual schedules (who has what Mass, appointments, meetings, etc.).  This girl understood it to mean that we only have enough food in the rectory to eat once a day, and for other meals we had to find food where we could.  She decided she would take it upon herself to feed her parish's Priests.

She saw a problem and decided she was going to solve it.  How many times do we over analyze a situation, ending up spending so much time micromanaging it that we end up creating more problems than we solved?

"I give praise to you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for although you have hidden these things from the wise and the learned you have revealed them to the childlike."