The towel had frayed edges and a splotch of lasagna on one corner, but it changed my outlook \u2013 and my closets — forever.<\/p>\n
It was my turn that day to deliver donations to Unity House \u2013apartments housing women who had recently come through drug detox.\u00a0 Most were setting up housekeeping from scratch and lacked basic supplies.\u00a0It felt like Christmas morning instead of a July afternoon as they sorted with cries of\u00a0 joy through the clothes and dishes the church\u00a0 had given.<\/p>\n
The faded blue towel wasn\u2019t really a donation. It had ridden to church underneath a pan of lasagna for fellowship dinner that day and had been brought in by mistake.<\/p>\n
\u201cMary,\u201d one of the women called. \u201cHere\u2019s a towel for you.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mary, a new resident at Unity House,\u00a0 dashed forward and took the towel with eager hands.<\/p>\n
\u201cThank you,\u201d she said. \u201cIt was so awful this morning. I wanted to take a shower, but I didn\u2019t have a towel and no one had one to spare.\u201d She caressed the towel as if it were made of gold thread instead of terrycloth.<\/p>\n
I thought\u00a0 with shame of my linen closet — so full\u00a0 that towels fell out on my head when I opened the door.\u00a0 Every closet was the same, stuffed to overflowing. I thought it was good stewardship to keep things in case I should ever need them again.\u00a0 But why should I stash things away when these women needed them right now?<\/p>\n
I went home and cleaned out the linen closet.\u00a0 Then I moved on to my clothes closets and kitchen cabinets. Perfectly good items I hadn\u2019t used in years came to light.\u00a0 Some of it I didn\u2019t even recognize.\u00a0 It took three trips to get everything to Unity House.<\/p>\n
When I finished, my closets were beautiful.\u00a0 Best of all, my packrat tendencies were exterminated forever.\u00a0 When I\u2019m tempted to buy something because it\u2019s on sale, I think of Mary and her joy over my accidental gift.\u00a0 The bargains usually find their way to Unity House instead of\u00a0 to my closets.<\/p>\n
God has blessed me so abundantly. Now I know why —\u00a0 so I can share.\u00a0 Good stewardship doesn\u2019t lie in stashing and saving, but in giving.<\/p>\n
A big lesson from a frayed towel spotted with lasagna!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The towel had frayed edges and a splotch of lasagna on one corner, but it changed my outlook \u2013 and my closets — forever. It was my turn that day to deliver donations to Unity House \u2013apartments housing women who had recently come through drug detox.\u00a0 Most were setting up housekeeping from scratch and lacked…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":423,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[157,154,153,155,156],"class_list":["post-665","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sunday-special-messages","tag-closets","tag-donations","tag-giving","tag-needs","tag-towel"],"yoast_head":"\n