crossing thresholds

A couple years before I met my husband, he had moved to Edinburgh, Scotland, on a whim. He was living in Italy, where he had spent most of his youth, and was jobless, homeless and essentially ignored by his mother and siblings who lived in the same town. As he tells the story, he had the equivalent of $400 in his pocket and saw a sign in a travel agency window for a one-way ticket to Edinburgh for roughly the same amount. With barely a second thought, he walked into office, bought the ticket and left the next day.

His first day in Edinburgh, Andrew found a job washing dishes at a pub. After a week, the pub manager called him into her office and asked him how it was going and where he was living. He told her (proudly, I imagine, and without any sense that it should have been otherwise) that he had a tent and was camping at a nearby campground. Alice, the bar manager, looked surprised and then shook her head "no, no," reached into her purse and pulled out her checkbook. Before Andrew could protest, she wrote out a check for 800 pounds and told him to go find an apartment and he could pay her back later.

Every time I hear my husband repeat this story to someone, I get a lump in my throat. Although Alice knew Andrew for another two years and saw not only her loan paid back but his promotion to cook and assistant bar manager and his courtship and engagement to this nice-enough American girl, I don't think she could ever know the tremendous (dare I say, life-changing) impact her split-second decision had on him. She did not know my husband for more than seven days and yet she risked losing a large sum of money, not to mention trust in another person's ability and desire to do the right thing, just because she had an instinct to help him.

And yet, after all the times I have heard this story, I wonder. What would I have done? Even if I had an extra $1,500, would I freely loan it to someone who clearly needed it but who couldn't give me any collateral or firm assurances that he could pay it back? Would I be too caught up in wondering if I'd be taken advantage of or if the person in need really deserved to have the loan? Would I be afraid of looking foolish if I was "had"? Would I be willing to cross the threshold between what was comfortable for me and what might make a life-changing difference for someone else? I'd like to say that I would. I would like to say that I would be like Alice. I would like to say that I would do what Jesus would do. I am really praying that I would.

This post was published on another blog a couple years ago, but in this season of giving I thought it was worth repeating. May we all be moved to cross thresholds and give in such extravagant ways. In ways that pay dividends in the future but do nothing to improve our own position. In ways that cannot go unnoticed in the life of another, even years later. Thank you, Alice, for being Jesus to my family. May we never forget your example.