“I Would Do Anything for You!”
Members of the Helping Hand Club of West Carlton, Oregon, display a quilt they were making to help one of their members.
Photograph by Dorothea Lange,
Courtesy of the New York Public Library.
Winslow Homer painted A Basket of Clams in Gloucester, Massachusetts, in 1873. The painting is part of a series of watercolors depicting the daily lives of children in that seaside town. In this painting, two boys help one another carry a basket of clams across the beach.
A Basket of Clams by Winslow Homer, 1873,
courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art,
Gift of Arthur G. Altschul, 1995
According to the caption of this photograph, these children have helped their mother stretch their ration points during World War II by buying more fruits, vegetables, and cereals than the family was used to eating before rationing.
Photograph by Roger Smith
for the United States Office of War Information,
courtesy of the New York Public Library.
In this photograph that I have shared with you before, a mother helps her daughter work in the kitchen of a café in Pie Town, New Mexico, in June of 1940. The daughter runs the café with her husband.
Photograph by Russell Lee,
Courtesy of the Library of Congress.
In 1939 photographer Dorothea Lange captured this picture of a grandmother who was helping parents and children in her large family who lived in Malheur County, Oregon.
Courtesy of the New York Public Library.
A few weeks ago Ray and I were driving to a program to hear our granddaughter sing in a homeschool chorus. I hoped, rather ambitiously, that I would have time to run into a store on the way. Ray dropped me off at the door and waited to pick me up when I finished. However, when I arrived at the busy checkout lines with my items, I realized I had been too optimistic.
Just as I got there, Ray called to tell me we needed to leave right away. I told him where I was and that the lines were very busy. Just then, a woman said, “You can get in front of me.”
“Are you sure?” I asked.
“I would do anything for you,” she replied. I was grateful and stunned. Why would a complete stranger say such a thing to me?
Then she said, “You don’t know who I am, do you?” I didn’t.
She told me her name and gave me a little information that prompted my memory. Over twenty years ago, Ray was kind to her young father-in-law who was dying after a brief battle with cancer.
Her words have come to mind again and again since that night when Ray and I sat down in our seats less than five minutes before that program began.
“I would do anything for you.” Who needs to hear those words from me? Who needs to hear those words from you?
For you were called to freedom, brethren;
only do not turn your freedom
into an opportunity for the flesh,
but through love serve one another.
Galatians 5:13