Death, food, giving and an oasis.

Saturday was an interesting day.  My wife read an article in the daily paper about 18 month old Jesaydin Guerrero losing his life in a traffic accident.  The family needed money to have a funeral for the child so they set up a BBQ stand at the funeral home over the weekend to raise much needed funds.  The accident was especially tragic because it was a family member who accidentally ran over the child, and then to add insult to injury the family doesn’t have the money to bury him.

It took about .3 seconds for us to be in the car headed for the funeral home.  Although I’ve been going to school for over a year and have had no job, my wife and I still feel blessed and when God moves us to share of our finances we know we have to do it.  God loves us, and would never leave us short on money, so even when we don’t think we have enough to share, we have found that if we follow God’s urging we always come out ok.

Anyway, we went to the funeral home and there was a pretty good crowd.  Family and friends were busy grilling up chicken quarters and Kielbasa sausage.  There were beans and potato salad and bread, packaged in the neat Styrofoam container with a picnic style plastic fork, knife and napkin in a sealed bag.  Nice meal.

The gentlemen gave us our meals and asked for $12. Now, this is where God moves in my life.  He continually shows me that I am blessed, and I have to say one of my greatest pleasures is giving to those who are in need.  I’m the guy who stops traffic to hand a beggar a few bucks that everyone hates because they feel I’m enabling this guy not to work, or that he’ll just spend it on booze.  Well, I don’t care what they think, if the guy spends it on something I wouldn’t approve of then that is on him, not me.  What I handed him was a gift, and once I gave it to him it became his to do with whatever he wants.  It doesn’t lessen my responsibility to try and help him.

Sorry to get off the path.  My point is that I know people need help sometimes, and I’ve been blessed beyond compare.  So I took my two meals, handed the guy a hundred bucks, politely said “keep the change,” and left.  I heard him say “God bless you!” as we walked away, and I thought to myself “He just did.”

We left the funeral home and it was such a nice day that I drove to the other side of I-10 to Camp St and stopped at Chris Park.  This little one acre green-space is truly an oasis in the ugly downtown urbanity of San Antonio.  It was built by Linda Pace as a memorial to her son who died at the age of 25.  The park is across the street from the Camp Street Lofts and is pretty easy to find off S. Flores.  You may recognize the name “Pace.” They created Pace Picante and used to own the Pearl Brewery (Pabst Blue Ribbon).

We took our BBQ bounty and sat under a beautiful shade tree and enjoyed the beauty of the park, shutting out the sights and sounds of the city for a while, and contemplated the abruptness of life, and losing an 18 month old child.

The contrast of death and the beauty of the life in the park was a reminder to me that our world is filled with both, and we will all be touched by both at some time in our life.  I don’t have the answer to the question of “why did God let this happen to Jesaydin.”  I only know that He doesn’t wish us harm.  Only Satan wishes us harm.  God teaches us through adversity, and strengthens us through our failures.