[$12 An Hour!]

Gratefulness is a game changer and I had a funny encounter the other day that made me realize just how good I have it.

I have been in an interesting season in life. I am working at a church and part time at a bakery. At the bakery I get paid $12 an hour and a few weeks back I was complaining to myself about how I’m 27 years old, still figuring things out and just making $12/hour at this bakery. Anyways, I am the pastor on call one morning at my church, this consists of greeting and taking care of any homeless folks that come in and need food or clothes. 

I arrive a couple minutes late and there are two homeless guys who are already there. I apologize to Barbara the lady at the front desk who had to help them without me. Then I scramble over to the guys and ask them what they need and how I can help them. One of them goes into a long list of specific things that he needs. A sporty t shirt that fits his style, nice athletic size 11 shoes, some nice pants 38W by 32L, and the list goes on. I write down each of these needs then before I can go back to check the clothes closet he tells me that they are on a tight schedule and need to be at another appointment very soon. So I hurry to the back and look for the clothes.

Turns out we don’t have many of the items that he requested so I get the closest things and bring them back. The guy meets me at the door, let’s just call him Jerry, and Jerry looks through what I have “NO, NO, NO, hmm YES, NO, YES, YES” he grabs the three items then walks back over to the table where his stuff and his friend is.

About this time another homeless guy walks in. I am starting to lose my patience because of the entitled nature of Jerry and the lack of gratitude that he displayed. It felt like he was shopping for his perfect style and since we didn’t have it he was a dissatisfied customer. So I greet this new guy, Barbara grabs him a lunch and I ask him what I can get for him. He tells me the clothes that he’s looking for, some pants, a long sleeve shirt and a short sleeve. I run to the back to grab those things.

As I return I walk over to this guy, we’ll call him Marshall, and I tell him what I’ve got and I show it to him. He grabs one of the shirts and says “Ohhh”. As he’s holding it, I am thinking to myself this guy better not be as ungrateful as the last guy or I will probably just take all the clothes back. But then something special happened, his look of surprise went into a huge smile and he said “This is perfect!” so I showed him the next shirt and he got even more excited! Then I showed him the pants, planning on only giving him 2 pairs but as I handed them to him he kept saying thank you and these are perfect and so I gave him the third pair as well. 

After giving Marshall the clothes he started telling Barbara and I about his life how he was married and his life fell apart as he got addicted to drugs became an alcoholic and how he was just starting to get his life back on track. He told us about this job that he recently applied to and he said the manager talked to him and said “Marshall we are going to pay you $12 per hour”, then he looked at me with his jaw dropped and repeated it “TWELVE DOLLARS PER HOUR! Can you believe that?!” I thought to myself, Wow, I was just complaining about $12/hour, this is a nice wake up call for me. As we kept talking Barbara told me how Marshall had shared his lunch with the other two guys who arrived earlier even though they had already received their own lunch from us. 

Barbara was so blown away by Marshall’s gratitude, generosity and thankful heart that she went to the closet to grab some nice long sleeve dress shirts for him. I was so impacted by it that I also went back there to grab some more food for him. He probably said “Twelve Dollars An Hour!!!” about 12 times while we were talking and then when he left he had a huge bag of clothes and food to last him throughout the week.

I thought to myself afterwards how gratitude attracts more blessing. And how the way God sees us when we are entitled to things was the way I saw Jerry as he was dissatisfied with his limited selection of clothes but the way God sees us when we are thankful for the little things is the same as how I saw Marshall when he said “Ohhh this is PERFECT!” and then I started giving him everything I had in my hands and went back to grab more!

Thankfulness is truly the game changer. We are blessed beyond compare. Now yes there is always someone who has more than us, but there are billions more people that have less than us. Three billion people live on less than $2.50 a day, that’s almost half the world’s population! And gratitude is a choice. You can focus on what you have or on what you don’t have. 

When we are thankful, especially towards God, we start seeing all the gifts and blessings He has given us. I have a challenge for you and it’s something I have been trying to do the last few days. Designate 3 minutes each day to being thankful for what you have. If it’s first thing in the morning it’s even better. Trust me, it will change your day. Thanks for letting me share.

May your love be strong (And your gratitude),

Joey