The Needy

She came because she needs help — money, food, papers, company, relief from something heavy. She may say so plainly. She may not say so at all, and you work it out over a few weeks.

And something in you tightens, because you have been warned about this. You have heard the phrase rice Christian. You are alert to being used.

Slow down on that instinct

Read the crowds around Jesus. A great many of those people came because they needed something — healing, food, a child made well. He fed them and healed them, and he was not naive about it; he said out loud that some were following him because they ate the loaves. He kept teaching them anyway.

Need is not a disqualification. It is the most common reason human beings have ever sought out God, and it appears all over the Psalms without apology.

The two failures, and the way between them

The first failure is suspicion. Treating her as a probable freeloader, holding back warmth, watching for the ask. She will feel it, because people in need are experts at reading who is wary of them.

The second failure is rescue. Quietly becoming her solution — the source of money, rides, and answers. It feels like love and it does real damage: it puts you in the middle of her relationship with God, makes the group depend on your resources, and creates something that cannot possibly reproduce. The next group will not have you in it.

Between them is a plain path. Meet what you can meet, openly, as one member of a community rather than as the patron of a client. Let the group carry it rather than carrying it alone. And keep asking her the same questions you ask everyone, because the thing she most needs is the one thing your money cannot buy her.

What she teaches the group

Very often the person who arrived needy becomes the one who obeys fastest. People who know they need something are not defended against the text the way comfortable people are. Do not be surprised when she is the first to actually do what the passage says.

Recite this

Her need is not a disqualification. Meet it as a member, not as a patron.

Try it this week

Think of the member with the most obvious need. Ask the group — not yourself — what could be done about it this week, and let them answer.

I will bring ________________’s need to the group, not carry it alone, on ________________.