Carol McClain

Do We Have Any Volunteers in the Audience?

Picture stolen from Kimberly Connel

     I peeled my eyes opened. Eight a.m. on a Saturday. Forget the fact that my weeks have six Saturdays and one Sunday, my brain had been trained and  Saturday is sleep-in, lazy sacrosanct. However every Saturday we members of North Country Habitat for Humanity banded together to work on the restoration of a house for a needy and deserving family..
      I didn’t want to go. Jimminy Crickets, it was Saturday. But James 2:14-17 might as well be engraved on my forehead. “Dear friends, do you think you’ll get anywhere in this if you learn all the right words but never do anything? Does merely talking about faith indicate that a person really has it? … Isn’t it obvious that God-talk without God-acts is outrageous nonsense?”(from THE MESSAGE)
     So I rose and within the hour I shined. Once again I discovered joy in giving. I hammered nails, chatted with friends, learned skills, watched our family work for the home they’d soon inhabit and ate a fabulous lunch prepared by Joanna, a dear friend on our local board. I couldn’t imagine any greater way to spend a Saturday.
     And I learned some valuable lessons to boot:

1. toenailing has nothing to do with a pedicure
2. a shank isn’t something prisoners use nor something you braise in an oven
3. a stud is not a virile man
4. strapping is not used in S & M
5. a dike is not a gay woman nor something that holds back water

     So tell me what you think these mean?