I’d like to report a robbery that did NOT occur. We constantly
hear so much in the news, movies, and on TV about the terrible
things that people have done:
“There are acres of diamonds to be found in this city. They are not in far away mountains or across distant seas. They are in your own backyard if you will but dig for them.” – Russell H. Conwell
I’d like to report a robbery that did NOT occur. We constantly hear so much in the news, movies, and on TV about the terrible things that people have done: the burglar who robbed an elderly woman, the teacher who behaved inappropriately with a student, the drunk driver who caused a fatal accident, the husband who abused his wife, or the pedophile who murdered a child. But what about all the bad things that DON’T happen and the good things that DO happen?
For instance, I’d like to report a robbery that didn’t occur this week. A soldier who was deployed to Iraq left $25,000 worth of tools stored in Gilroy while he’s away. The owner of the storage unit forgot to lock up one evening last week and left its large door completely open all night. The tools were in full view in the front area of the storage unit, yet the next morning, not one item had been stolen.
Hopefully the difficulty I experienced last Saturday when trying to find a parking space is a sign that more people are finding things to do downtown these days. After driving around for awhile, I found a spot near the bowling alley. When I came back after having lunch, I discovered that my car was unlocked and the keys were still in the ignition. Even though it would have taken only a moment for someone to steal my car, no one had.
After my mom’s pipes froze and burst in her attic in the recent cold snap, her ceiling fell in, and part of her house was flooded and covered in mounds of insulation. It has taken a number of people to dig her out of the mess. One of the disaster clean-up crew was a guy named Eddie who came everyday to monitor the dehumidifiers and fans that ran around the clock in order to dry out her house. He mounted a hose from the attic to the bath tub to help drain the rest of the water out.
On the last day of his clean-up job, Eddie, sensing from remarks my mom had made that she wouldn’t mind if he asked, “Can I pray with you before I leave?”
“He prayed for my health and for the health of my home, asking God to heal me from the top of my head to my toes,” my mom said with a big smile, her spirits buoyed by this caring man in the face of the disaster in her home.
To celebrate Unity Sunday every January, an exchange takes place between the mainline churches of Gilroy in which pastors swap pulpits and make appearances at each others’ churches. The local Ministerial Council coordinates this annual event which gives pastors and congregations a chance to experience the personality, music, and style of churches other than their own. When you take the time to visit other peoples’ places of worship and of service, you realize just how much we all have in common with each other.
That is not to say that unity equals uniformity, by any means. As Father Saju Joseph, of St. Mary’s Parish put it when he preached at the Methodist Church, “If two people walk the same way and talk the same way, one of them is completely unnecessary.
“We come from all different backgrounds and cultures and customs, and we are all the richer for it, all the more vibrant. It is not the way we stand or the way we pray that unites us. It is the way we reach out together to help others that unites us. It is the way we reach out to the needy and to those who are in chains, even in a free world. That spirit unites us.”
