A Harvest Thought.

In his book, Letters from the Desert, The Little Brother of Jesus, Carlo Carretto tells of a journey in the Sahara that he made soon after becoming a monk.
He arrived at a place just as the sun was setting and the temperature plummeted. It is a fact that the Sahara is known as a ‘cold country where it is very hot in the sun’. Because of this he carried two blankets. In a village he noticed an old man shivering with cold.
Carlo thought that he should give the old man one of his blankets but he thought of the night ahead and the cold that was descending. He knew that he really ought to have given the old man a blanket but when he drove off in his jeep the blankets were still with him.
Eventually he made camp under a great rock that would give him shelter from the wind.
He wrapped himself in both his blankets and eventually he fell asleep.
And he had a dream. He dreamed that he was lying under the very rock he had camped under.
In the dream the rock moved and a great boulder fell on top of him. It did not kill him but he was no longer able to move his body. He opened his eyes  and saw the old man shivering before him. Now, he didn’t hesitate, The blanket was no longer any use to him so he tried to stretch out his hand to offer the blanket but the stone made even the smallest movement impossible. The blanket mocked him and reminded him of his lack of charity.
He wondered how long he might have to remain under the rock and God then spoke to his heart:  Until you are capable of an act of perfect love.

In an inverted sort of way this story is about God’s Providence. God provided warmth and protection for the shivering old man but it was denied him by the selfishness of Carlo Carretto.
It isn’t that God hasn’t provided for the needs of the world – the planet teems with everything we need to sustain life and he expects us to share its goodness equally with all.
It’s just that some have more and want even more and so deny Providence to those in need.

In Judaism an essential part of the Covenant was to provide for the poor through the principle of Justice-as-Charity. Prayer to God must be accompanied by how we act responsibly in the world. Creation is the gift we must ensure is enjoyed by all for, as Jonathan Sacks, the late Chief Rabbi, put it in his book To Heal a Fractured World:

God created the world so that others could enjoy it. Goodness is not an attribute of the soul but a way of acting and creating: creating happiness for other people, mitigating their distress, removing even a fraction of the world’s pain. we worship God spiritually by helping his creation physically.

St Ambrose takes this a little further when he says
When you give to the poor it is not from your own wealth; it is a fragment of their property you are returning to them, for it is common property given for all to use that you are keeping for yourself.

An essential part of God’s Providence is ourselves. He has provided  us with the ability to help each other.
In a Christian society, as in the Jewish one of our Lord’s time, it is the mutual care we have of each other which makes a real difference to people’s lives. That needs to include those of all faiths if it is to have a Universal application.

Jonathan Sacks says that charity to others is a form of prayer – a preliminary to prayer.  It is only when we act with justice and compassion,  when we recognize his (God’s) image in other people and hear the silent cry of those in need  that we shall really understand that we are part of God’s Providence – and for that be truly thankful.