Free Lunch is 1 year old

1 year ago this past weekend was the first free lunch. 805 lunches later, i feel like my blog posts have just become boring! It kind of troubled me at first, but after some reflection, I came to realize that free lunch is predictable. And for me, predictable is good. The people I see are familiar. The newness of experiencing a different culture and different kinds of people with different values has worn off. The are no longer objects that fulfill my desire of being charitable, they are people I see and even know a little bit. I see Lorenzo at the community center almost every time. Lorenzo knows me and I know him. He sees my car and he stands up and puts his arms out with a smile, and we walk to eachother and shake hands, and it is good to see him. I look forward to seeing Lorenzo, and I hope he looks forward to seeing me. After we exchange our greeting, he grabs a lunch and we hang out for a little bit.

When I think about it, it takes a measure of trust to take a lunch from a stranger. I would be a little skeptical if someone just gave me a lunch...what if they put ex-lax in the chocolate chip cookies? Luckily, I don't serve chocolate chip cookies, so I don't ever get the question.

The familiarity is a good thing. A very smart dude sends out an email every so often, and the last email was pretty insightful and encouraging to my latest experience, Floyd McClung writes:

Put down and cultivate roots. There is no fruit without roots. Roots give us strength. They bring stability when the wind blows. Roots mean we belong. A rootless person is a person who floats through life, never having stayed long enough or committed deep enough to really give himself or herself to a place or a people. Roots give us depth. In times of drought people with roots will survive, even thrive, while others dry up. There are seasons in everyone’s life of dryness. But a person with deep roots draws from the water that flows far beneath the surface. There are different kinds of roots: emotional roots, relational roots, cultural roots, and spiritual roots. Love the place God puts you. Love the people God joins you with. Invest your life in a small community of people where you are known, held accountable, and are loved.

If I were to stop doing free lunch, I would feel a little uprooted. That's a good thing, and a new thing, something I can smile about.