Oh ... Brother!

My youngest brother is visiting. Sort of. He's staying with us at night and involved in a business project during the day. He's not sure how long he'll stay here, but it may be the better part of two weeks. We had about 22 hours notice that he'd be coming. That was actually a long notice from him. I'm enjoying this. I get to see him in the morning and in the evening and catch up in little pieces on his life.

He and his wife own a tent rental and party goods business in western Massachusetts. For a long time he and his wife have struggled to maintain good employees because their employment needs are fairly seasonal. Last summer they hired some laborers from Guatemala. He loved those men! They arrived at work on time and worked all day. His worst fear with them was running out of tasks for them. He tried to give them a weekend off and take them to our family house on the lake in Vermont for some relaxation and respite. A small reward for for such excellent service, but someone in their community had a house that needed to be painted. So they worked instead. But when they went back to Guatemala my brother and his wife sent them back with suitcases full of things for their families: toys, gifts for their wives, things for their homes, clothes.

My brother and his wife are rehiring the men plus two more this summer. He was on the phone with them in my kitchen the other morning. It was amusing to hear his pidgin Spanish and imagine the pidgin English on the other end of the phone. I fed him some Spanish words to help and by the end of his conversations he was doing better.

Here's the thing ... for my whole time in the evangelical church I was told that people who are not "saved", who do have "the love of Christ," cannot do loving things. That we can only love because He first loved us. But I look around me all the time and see evidence which refutes this. My very parents give lie to that statement. Ben hires his men from Guatemala, in part because they do a good job, but also because they send a portion of their salaries back home to their families. He does it because it's one small way he can help a few people in a developing country.

I wonder sometimes how the evangelicals can continue to believe these narrow definitions. That God is only speaking to and through them. Because clearly there are others out there who hear His call to care for their neighbors, even while they might not define it in quite that manner. And I wonder how each will be treated in the hereafter ... those who have kept perfect theology, but walled themselves off from those less fortunate and those who have not "asked Jesus into their hearts" but who care for the "least of the these" yet follow God with an intuition that is uncanny.