Ahh, the days of summer are here. They remind me of something that happened years ago, when Lori and I took our grandson, Eli, then 8 years old, for an overnight outing to Louisville. We endured the Sunday afternoon heat at a Louisville Bats baseball game, then cooled off at the hotel pool, and were on our way to eat pizza, his favorite cuisine. The next morning, we planned to tour the Louisville Slugger Museum.
As we walked the streets of Louisville toward Bearno’s Pizza, Eli spotted him — the man on the street. “Look, PopPop,” Eli said, seeking an explanation. The man stood holding a cardboard sign, begging for money, an unfortunately common sight in any metropolitan downtown area. I momentarily hesitated before grasping my grandson’s hand and walking toward the man.
He certainly fit the image of “homeless.” Dirty trousers complemented a shabby shirt, and ill-fitting, cracked shoes exposed his sockless feet.
Reasons not to give flickered through my mind. How would I know he wouldn’t spend the money on alcohol or drugs? I’ve also wondered whether some people begging on the streets are actually victims of human trafficking, forced by someone else to collect money. And even setting those concerns aside, I’ve asked myself the harder question: am I really helping? Am I treating a long-term problem with nothing more than a short-term remedy?
These are not unreasonable questions. But then a quieter voice pushes back.
In Luke 10, a lawyer asked Jesus a question not entirely unlike mine — a question designed, the text tells us, to justify himself: “And who is my neighbor?” Jesus responded not with a policy paper on poverty, but with a story. A man was beaten and left to die on a roadside—two religious leaders who crossed to the other side. And a Samaritan — an outsider, an unlikely hero — who stopped, knelt down, and helped. Jesus closed the parable with a simple command: “Go and do likewise.”
He didn’t say, “First verify the man’s intentions.”
Theologian Henri Nouwen once wrote, “The question is not ‘How much should I give?’ but rather ‘How much can I keep?'” That reframing has always unsettled me in the best possible way. It shifts the burden of proof. Instead of asking what might go wrong if I give, it asks what I’m holding back — and why.
Proverbs 19:17 offers its own pointed perspective: “Whoever is kind to the poor lends to the Lord, and he will reward them for what they have done.” Not “whoever is kind to the deserving poor.” Just the poor. The judgment of worthiness, it turns out, isn’t mine to make.
I’ve heard it said that we’re not called to be auditors of grace — we’re called to be conduits of it.
So I knelt beside that man on the Louisville sidewalk. I don’t remember exactly what I said. I do recall handing the money to Eli and gripping his hand in mine, then pressing it into the beggar’s hand.
Jesus said in Acts 20:35, quoting a teaching recorded nowhere in the Gospels but carried in the memory of those who walked with him: “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” Not more strategic. Not more financially prudent. More blessed.
I will never know what the man did with the money we placed in his hand. But I know what my grandson saw on a hot Sunday evening in Louisville — that the person on the street corner with the cardboard sign is our neighbor, too. And that we had obeyed Jesus’ command to go and do likewise.
From the proud grin on Eli’s face, as we walked away, you would have thought he had received a blessing from the Pope himself.
The next day on the drive home, Eli wanted to call his mother.
“Guess what I did, Momma?” he said.
I anticipated an animated conversation recounting how much fun he had at the game, that he had eaten nine pieces of pizza the night before, and how amazing the museum was.
“I got to give to a homeless man,” he declared to his momma.
I smiled to myself.
Yes, it’s true, I thought: it is more blessed to give than to receive.