First Communion<\/a>. When she tried to pay with a credit card, she learned the store only took cash or checks.<\/p>\n\u201cEverybody takes credit cards,\u201d she thinks to herself. \u201cMcDonalds takes credit cards!\u201d<\/p>\n
Knuth complains bitterly about the stores \u201clousy\u201d hours and the inconvenience to Dorothy, the white-haired saint at the register, who tells her, sweetly:\u00a0 \u201cMost of our customers don\u2019t have credit cards. So it\u2019s usually not a problem.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dorothy\u2019s words and subsequent kindness toward not-so-gentle giant who suddenly appears at Knuth\u2019s elbow angrily demanding to be given new shoes to wear to church, shocks the author into realizing that she is not standing in a simple thrift store. She\u2019s in a sacred place.<\/p>\n
Knuth has been volunteering at the St. Vincent de Paul Society store ever since.<\/p>\n
Recalling one of her earliest days at the shop, Knuth says: \u201cThose three people standing outside [in the rain] aren\u2019t problems to be solved \u2014 they are my teachers. They aren\u2019t going to mug me \u2014 they\u2019re going to show me the way to God.\u201d<\/p>\n
The St. Vincent de Paul Society is a worldwide Catholic organization founded in Paris in 1833 with the express purpose of meeting the physical needs of the poor by going to them and offering help.<\/p>\n
\u201cDon\u2019t make the poor ask for what God, their Father, wants them to have,\u201d St. Vincent said. \u201cWe should apologize if they have to ask for what they need.\u201d<\/p>\n
Votaire said that God is a comedian who plays to an audience that is afraid to laugh. Happily for her readers, Knuth isn\u2019t afraid to laugh, sharing her God stories in breezy, eloquent prose with ample self-deprecation and great humor.<\/p>\n
With that trajectory in mind, Knuth finds herself in many unexpected places and situations where she meets the living and loving God.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s the story Knuth going after-hours to meet a client at the big box retail store where she works her second job as a greeter. The woman has no break so Knuth pulls out a pen and fills out the paperwork herself, lobbing questions at the harried single mom who answers dutifully without missing a beat.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m going to need your landlord\u2019s name and phone number\u2026the last four digits of your Social Security,\u201d Knuth begins.<\/p>\n
\u201cHave a nice day! His name is ______ and he lives on ____,\u201d the woman answers. (I picture her giving her personal data in a stage whisper while fiddling with the nametag on her uniform vest.) \u201cHave a nice day! And my Social Security number is ______. Need a cart today, miss?\u201d<\/p>\n
On another occasion, a nurse from a local hospital calls the thrift shop. There is a patient, an older woman who\u2019s recovering from a debilitating illness and being released that day, who has no bed at home. The nurse has a bed to give the patient, but no way to get it to her. Can the Society help?<\/p>\n
Knuth and her husband, Dean (a lovely soul), deliver the bedroom set, complete with floral linens, to the ailing woman\u2019s home in Kalamazoo\u2019s dodgiest neighborhood, meeting drug addicts and would-be thieves along the way. As they leave, the woman tells them she\u2019s never had a bed of her own.<\/p>\n
In the chapter\u201dEchoes of Christmas,\u201d Knuth recounts one Christmas season not to many years ago when sales at the St. Vincent de Paul store have been off and, as a result, the staff is faced with a dilemma: Should they use the limited funds they have to help clients with their rent and utilities or should they continue \u00a0the shop\u2019s tradition of giving families who request them (sometimes year after year) Christmas gift baskets? Looking at the books, they don\u2019t have enough money to do both.<\/p>\n
After much soul searching, Knuth and her fellow volunteers decide to step out in faith and do both, even if it looks like it\u2019ll take a miracle to do so. They assemble the gift baskets and hand them out. Several large monetary donations arrive at the last minute and the shop ends up having so many toys left over that they give them to a homeless shelter across the street.<\/p>\n
As Knuth and the other volunteers are cleaning up a few minutes before closing shop for the holiday, a mother turns up in the shop office crying. She has two young children and is struggling to keep the lights in her home turned on. Three days before Christmas, she was forced to return the kids\u2019 gifts to Walmart. She needed the cash. Knuth and her cohorts assemble a sack full of gifts that would have made St. Nicholas proud.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen Jesus blessed the five loaves and two fish and instructed his friends to share it with the crowd, it still looked like five loaves and two fish,\u201d Knuth writes. \u201cThey must have felt a bit foolish telling everyone to sit down and dig in. they couldn\u2019t have known that the miracle would occur after they gave the food away. \u2026Our worrying was such a waste of time.\u201d<\/p>\n
In her charming book, Knuth indulges neither the twee nor the contrived. Her stories ring true precisely because they are full of the kind of imperfect details that make life what it is. Messy. Surprising. Maddening. Blessed.<\/p>\n
Which brings me to second-hand socks.<\/p>\n
Tim is a store regular. He\u2019s young, fresh-faced and rides his bike everywhere. Knuth first meets Tim the day he\u2019s standing at the register trying to decide between purchasing a plastic change purse or a pair of (used) socks. Each item costs 25 cents, but he doesn\u2019t have enough on him for both.<\/p>\n
Refusing to take the socks with him and pay on his next visit, Tim pedals to his bank and comes back with a quarter.<\/p>\n
\u201cBlessed are you who are poor,\u201d Knuth writes recalling one of the Beatitudes<\/a>, \u201cFor the kingdom of God is yours.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What I actually know about God might, on a good day, fit on a quarter of the head of a pin compared to the fullness of God\u2019s true hugeness. That said, there are a couple of things about the Almighty that I\u2019m pretty certain are true. God\u2019s grace is always staggering and often surprising. And […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2102,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[651,652,21,22,653,654,655,656,657],"class_list":["post-3810","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-godstuff-2","tag-blessed","tag-christmas","tag-faith","tag-grace","tag-jane-knuth","tag-kalamazoo","tag-poor","tag-st-vincent-de-paul","tag-thrift-store-saints"],"yoast_head":"\n
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