What Would You Give?

Friday night I went to The Rock in Fullerton to see a screening of, "Comedy, The Road Less Traveled." It's a documentary about comedian Michael Jr. and how he took comedy into places that really needed it. In the documentary he visits a youth correctional facility in Norwalk an HIV care facility in Ft. Worth, Texas called the Samaritan House, a home for drug endangered children in Colorado called the Dolphin House, and the Union Rescue Mission in downtown LA.

At the top of the documentary he poses the following questions:

1. Could you give if you had no resources or money?
2. If so, what would you give?

Michael Jr.'s gift is comedy, so he took comedy to people who really needed a laugh. But after the showing he got up and spoke and talked about the face that one of the facilities had really bad plumbing when he got there and really bad plumbing when he left because he was not a plumber. But he knew that someone out there was and could help.

He raises good points. People think many times that they cannot give because they don't have extra cash or extra stuff. But sometimes the things you do every day, your vocation or your hobby can be something that can help people in ways you never imagined.

Say for example you love to do crafts. Find a place you can volunteer and take the crafts to the women in a shelter. Granted, it may not give them a home, but it will give them respite from their situation for a while and help them return to feeling just like everyone else for a while.

If you're a musician, offer up your music where people can really use hearing some music. If you're a mechanic, see if you can help fix the cars of local charities or maybe even teach the people how to fix them.

None of us are short of gifts. We all have them. Now we just have to use them in the best ways we know how.

People are still people, the thing that separates us most times is our circumstances. Let's work to make that separation a little less.