At that moment the cock crowed for the second time. Then Peter remembered that Jesus had said to him, “Before the cock crows twice, you will deny me three times.” And he broke down and wept. (Mark 14:72)
Last month, I attended a Women’s Funding Network (WFN) conference. Women of the ELCA is a member of this consortium of women’s funds with wildly different reasons for existing, but all with the mission of helping women and children.
So I was bothered by my behavior when I failed to help a woman asking for help on the downtown streets of Denver. Here’s the way it played out.
A 30-or-so-year-old white woman, dressed at least as well as I was, walked up to me on the downtown street and pointed to her significant other, a well-built Black man, and said, “Can you give us . . . ” That’s all I heard before I curtly shook my head and walked on.
And then I felt bad. Here I was, at this women’s conference that is all about helping women in need, and I didn’t even let her finish her sentence. So, I decided I would watch the couple for a while to see if I made the right decision. It was raining pretty heavily, so I crossed the street and stood under an awning and observed.
Both she and her partner were approaching people and pointing, maybe to the bus line . . . I’m not sure. They were largely successful in receiving handouts. A lot of people opened their wallets. In fact, they barely had finished pocketing money before they turned to the next person and asked for money.
Ha! I thought. I was so right in not giving them money. And then they crossed to my side of the street, and the man approached me for money. I said, “I’ve watched you take money from about 10 people before me, so I don’t think so.” (Did I just hear the cock crow for a second time?) He ran to his wife or girlfriend or partner in crime or poverty and hustled her onto a bus, and they got out of there.
Was I right or was I wrong?
I talked to a colleague about it when I got back to the office, and she said she often gives money to people on the streets because she believes they wouldn’t ask for handouts it if they didn’t need the money. “If I feel like it, I give it to them, and I don’t think about it again,” she said. “I don’t wonder what they spend it on because once I hand it over to them, it’s not my money anymore.”
My husband frequently drops coins into the cups of people sitting on downtown Chicago streets, but many of those people look like they’re in dire straights. This couple didn’t look quite so helpless.
I have some compassion. If I didn’t, this incident wouldn’t plague me, and I certainly wouldn’t blog about it.
What would you have done?
Terri Lackey is managing editor of Lutheran Woman Today magazine.