I Missed Two Trains and Bought a Dude Lunch

First Day, Part 2:
When I arrived in Paris, I was carrying appreciable quantities in four different currencies. When I left, I had $5 and 0 Euros.

It's curious. I went to a membership class for The Rock a few months ago. I grabbed the reading materials they offered, intending to really delve into the philosophy of the GCC movement and The Rock in particular, and hoping to become convinced of its Biblical basis, before pledging to become a member. Like all things I grab and intend to read, they ended up in the living room, in the kitchen, on my desk, in my car, on the floor, next to my bed, in my backpack that spent equal time in all these places, and generally distributed about my residence in a similar fashion to everything else I own, unread.
I really do intend to read things. If I believed it to be possible, I would read just about every book I've ever heard of. As it stands, my list of "half-reads to finish sometime" has stopped growing, because I'm focusing on building up my "grab hard copies at garage sales and never read" list. I guess I have trouble getting started on things, but only because I realized that I have trouble finishing things, and so I don't want to make the commitment. I digress. I feel like every paragraph should end with "I digress," every time I speak.
For convenience and economy, my guitar became my one carry-on item. This meant, therefore, that I had to find away to stuff all my traveling reading materials and snacks into the pockets of my jacket and the narrow front pouch on my guitar case. It so happens that, among the free reading materials I received at the membership class, there was one rather small and narrow book, just under 100 pages, which was exactly the right size to squeeze in on top of my guitar. So, I ended up with Randy Alcorn's "The Treasure Principle" among my only reading material for my travels.

Needless to say, I have read it in its entirety (though I admit I skimmed over the "31 Questions to Ask Yourself" without considering them all in depth, because that seemed like too many questions to answer right in a row.) It is different. It's interesting. It's inspiring. It makes sense in the perfect way. Like the way where I'm sure I'll be ridiculed if someone finds out I believe it.

There are too many good points in this little book for me to adequately sum it all up. One of them concerns the meaning of Matthew 6:21: "Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." Where you put your money shows what you consider important, but it is also the case that when you put money into something, it becomes important to you. We want to protect our investment and to see something come of it.
Another principle is "Mo' Money, Mo' Problems." The author shares the story of a man rushing to find John Wesley with distressing news: Wesley's house had burned down. His response, paraphrased, is "That wasn't mine anyway; God granted me its use. Now, it's one less thing for me to worry about."

Anyway, this book really made an impression on me, and then I got off the plane.
Weeks ago, I found the cheapest ticket I could find for a bullet train to take me from Paris to Geneva and ordered it online. There was another train on the same itinerary an hour earlier and an hour later, but for some reason the 11:11 train was a better deal, so I booked it. Today, as my plane landed at 9:30 at the other end of an hour-long bus ride from the train station, I was left with very little time to get off and clear customs. Arriving at Gare de Lyon at 11:40 and having to wait in line for an open booth, I asked if I could change my expired ticket to the next one at 12:11 (this was expressly in the terms of my reservation.) Of course, the already-more-expensive midday train also seemed to not have a youth ticket pricing option, meaning I had to put a balance on my credit card that took it from "Hm, I though European rail transport was supposed to be relatively inexpensive..." to "Uh, can I just get a 200-mile taxi ride?" prices. At 12:09, with a fresh ticket in hand, I attempt to put on my backpack, pick up my snowboard, guitar, and unreasonably-heavy jacket with books in its pockets, and run out onto the platform to find my train.
I learned something: 2 minutes is not enough time to both waddle around carrying too much stuff and be unsure of where exactly you're even headed. I never even saw my train on the platform. It left without me.
So I waddled back to the booth, swung my snowboard through the elaborate maze they use to keep people orderly, and asked to exchange my ticket for the next one, in three hours. Great, I miss a train, pay more to miss a second train, and now my trip is delayed by 4 hours, I have no way to contact the person who is supposed to pick me up and shelter me for the night, and I have to carry all this crap around Paris.

As I'm walking towards the entrance of the station with my new ticket in hand, wondering what I'm gonna do until 3:11, a man approaches me. I'm cautious but polite. He needs money to buy baby formula for his daughter. That seems like a reasonably achievable thing to do with God's money to bless someone in need. "Sure," I say, "I was going to try to find somewhere to eat out here, anyway. Let's grab some lunch and then we'll get the formula."
"Oh, thank you, brother! May God bless you, brother! Here, let me carry those for you. You're tired."
You know, he's right. I am tired. I just met this guy and he's trying to get money from me; I don't know how honest he is... but my snowboard and guitar are too heavy and awkward to carry for him to able to steal them.

We set my stuff down outside a little Greek deli or whatever and go in to order. Again, my stuff is too heavy for someone to just run by and grab it, and it's within my line of sight. I'll only be inside for 30 seconds, anyway. We pick a table out front on the sidewalk and sit down. When our food gets brought out, he runs inside to wash his hands before the meal, then comes back out to ask me if I'd like to do the same. We've been together for almost 10 minutes now, so I feel confident enough to leave my stuff with him because it will take me less time the wash my hands than it would take him to put on my backpack. Plus, I'm buying him lunch. I wouldn't steal a guy's stuff until after lunch.

As we eat, I find out a lot about this guy. He's from Serbia in the former Yugoslavia. He's 23 years old and has been married 5 years. He and his wife have 2 daughters: Angelica, age 3, and Alexandra, nearly 1, who needs the formula. When he told me "God Bless you," he meant it: Yugoslavia is a strongly Catholic country, and this guy has what seems to be genuine reverence and faith for Jesus. He told me about his siblings, about his mother that died when he was 13, about his alcoholic father who never took care of his kids. He came to France four years ago to try to make better money for the family he was starting. He's worked in landscaping and got some sort of certification or license to do that kind of work, but he's been unemployed for 6 months and he has to beg for money in the frequented places of Paris. I ask him his name, and I don't quite get it. He repeats it. It sounds like halfway between "John" and "Dio." It's just a one-syllable word with three diphthongs in it. I ask him to spell it for me. He says he's illiterate.
I tell him about myself, too. It was -5 Celsius where I'm from when I left. I have three siblings. I'm going to Switzerland to study evangelism. I'm in the middle of a book about stewardship of God's money. I tell him I've missed two trains in a row this morning so that I could buy him lunch, and now I'm here until 3 o'clock. He says that God set it up that way. I agree.

We were done eating, but it wasn't even 1. I had some time to kill. We walked over to a courtyard made of cobblestones and sat down and talked. We grabbed some coffee. He told me about some other needs he had besides the formula. He told me he lives in a trailer park at the end of the D line of the RER. His trailer is heated by gas, and he was almost out. He said it cost 50 euros for 2 weeks' worth.

Every time I start to trust someone who is drastically less privileged than I am, I wonder if I'm naif. Every time I give someone money, I wonder if they're taking advantage of me. Cynically, I could analyze the strategy that lines up with what he is doing, and that is everything that he should do.
Step 1: Go up to people at random and ask them for a small charity for a family in need.
Step 2: If they are charitable, try to build a rapport with them so that they trust and like you. Take as much time as they'll give you.
Step 3: Ask them to help you out with more substantial sums of money. Get as much as they will give you.

My father taught me something while I was growing up that I always thought was somewhere in the Bible. I did a search, and found Matthew 5:42: "Give to him who asks of you, and do not turn away from him who wants to borrow from you."
Not wanting to take it out of context, I looked at the verses preceding it as well as the notes on that passage in my study Bible.
"But I say to you, do not resist an evil person; but whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also. If anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, let him have your coat also. Whoever forces you to go one mile, go with him two. Give to him who asks of you, and do not turn away from him who wants to borrow from you."
I don't know what to make of this verse and this passage. There aren't quantifiers. Give to him who asks of you... All that he asks? All you can afford? Up to a set amount? Whatever number you see first when you close your eyes and spin and look up?
The theme connecting these verses seems to be "People are going to wrong you and take advantage of you, and if you are my servants, you will let them."
This is heavy.

I gave this guy money. I gave this guy all the money I felt like I could spare, but I stopped giving before he stopped asking.

Doctrinally (which means that it's supposed to be what's true but it doesn't make sense to me), I believe that God will provide for my needs, despite and above my naive, good-hearted mistakes. He put me in that situation when He could just as easily made my plane land early so I wouldn't have run into Djoh at all. Also, I happened to have a wad of cash on me that I had designated several months ago as "to be used for God's purposes" without knowing what that was supposed to be. And, of course the book I was reading. If I wasn't supposed to give this guy money, I don't know what I was supposed to learn in this circumstance.

Randy Alcorn's book makes the point that when we give money away (and this applies to anything,) we relinquish control of it. It's humility to give money to someone out of obedience to God when you have no idea if they're telling you the truth. But really, it's God's problem, if it's His money you're giving to the "wrong person," and it's His concern if that money leaves His child (you) in need, and He's big enough to handle both. We're small enough to trust and obey Him without questioning, arguing, justifying, or worrying. I believe God rewards faith and faithfulness in this.

I'm sure there are people who will read this who will call me an idiot and a fool. And, in some ways, I'm the worst kind.

Fool Type 1: Reckless, Thoughtless, Undisciplined Fool
I said above that I gave him as much as I felt I could afford. I use the word "felt" intentionally to indicate that I didn't really calculate what I could afford. This entire trip's budget is a little fuzzy, actually. In hard numbers with regular math, I could probably not have afforded to buy myself lunch in Paris, let alone lunch for this guy along with his groceries and utilities. I should have just eaten the stuff I had in my jacket pockets. I was already set up to rely on God's provision a little bit just to make it all come together, anyway. Now, my insufficient funds are even more not-$10,000. But that's what you're supposed to do: you're supposed to give. Not only have I heard countless stories of mysterious funds appearing for people who were faithful in giving, but it's in Malachi 3:10 "put me to the test, says the Lord of hosts, if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you a blessing until there is no more need."

Fool Type 2: Selfish, Faithless, Disobedient Fool
As I sort of left unresolved up there, when do I stop giving? I was willing to give a little. Baby formula; whatever. I was willing to buy him lunch, too. Yeah, that's not too bad. And, well, I had some Euros that weren't going to be useful to me once I entered Switzerland, so he would get better use out of them than I would. Also, the aforementioned wad of God cash. I would've felt guilty if I'd kept that with me and ended up spending it on myself. Yeah, so that should be enough for the gas to heat his home.
It felt good to unload some of the cash in my wallet. Then, he asked for something else, and I started to feel the sacrifice a little bit. I started to go "Hey, this is kinda a lot of money." I started to get a little more nervous. I went to the exchange booth and traded Dollars for Euros. Then I was out of cash besides Swiss Francs and Pounds, and he asked again. Well, I got the Swiss Francs for Switzerland. I'm gonna need those for me. And  I probably wasn't going to cross the Channel just so I could get my money's worth out of 40 Pounds... oh, but they're old pounds, so the french currency changer doesn't want them. Oh, well, here are a few more dollars, cuz you can trade those in. But these Swiss Francs are mine.
He asked me to just get some more Euros out of the ATM. He knew I could; I knew I could. I didn't want to. I was nervous about getting surcharges, and I didn't want to deplete my store anymore.
What I currently have in my wallet, in Swiss Francs, is probably more than the total amount of money I gave him. I could have given it to him, and it would have been enough for him to get groceries for the week and fix (or upgrade) his trailer, he thought. But no. I'd decided that I'd helped him enough for one day at the beginning of 5 months of me not earning any money.
Sure, the rest of what I'd had was in currencies that aren't pertinent to my situation, but it's still money. I still could have traded it just like he did or saved it for when I went to the respective countries. Why did I trust God enough that he would be faithful to replenish the half of my cash that was less immediately useful to me but not the other half? I didn't really give til it hurt and then give some more. I more gave til it was uncomfortable and then got nervous and said "Ok, this has to stop some time, and it's about now."

At the end of every streak of success, there's a failure. At both ends. I have a tendency to focus on failures, both my own and others. But then I forget about the successes!
Djoh's daughter can have formula to drink tonight. That's awesome! He got lunch today. Honestly, I don't know if he bought a tank of gas to heat his trailer. If he did, Praise Jesus for putting that together! If he didn't, I was at least able to be unselfish for a while.

I have his phone number, so we can meet up at the end of May when I'm on my way back through Paris. In the meantime, pray for him and his family.