God’s Imagination

By Bobby Neal Winters

God has a much better imagination than we do. He sees opportunities where we do not.  His grace encompasses everything.

I’ve been doing a scientific sampling of the coffee shops that are within walking distance of where I am staying here in Asuncion.  There are many fine places: Juan Valdez Café; El Café de Acá; El Café de Porfirio. None of them quite as good as Signet or Root, but all much, much better than...well you know. The big chain.

In my explorations, I was directed to one that was located “behind Centro Medico Bautista,”  the Baptist Medical Center.’t 

It’s a hospital. A hospital established by the Baptists.  I would guess Baptist missionaries.  I walked by and read the signs.  In addition to the hospital, they’ve got Sunday School on Sundays; two services, morning and evening; they’ve got Wednesday evening services; and something on Saturday for the youth.

And a biggish hospital. I say “biggish” because I don’t know their numbers.  It ain’t KU-Med, but it is a teaching hospital.

I was born, raised, and baptized as a Southern Baptist.  The week of your birthday, you were supposed to go to the front of the church, put in a penny in a little house for every year old you were, and have the congregation sing happy birthday to you.  That money went to missions.

I stood for a long moment looking at what I believe to be some of the fruit of that collective effort.

As I continued to walk, I looked at the neighborhood.  There were lots of nice service businesses here. Well, of course, they are next to a hospital. There were restaurants--coffee shops!--pharmacies.  There was a “Beef Club”. (I’ve no idea what the hell that is!) All of this was drawn by the hospital.

Then I thought about all the doctors who would have houses and in this culture housekeepers, groundskeepers, etc.  Many incomes are being generated beyond those just in the hospital.

The ripples go throughout the city.

And, in my mind at least, this is connected with all those pennies Baptists are putting in the little red-roofed houses for their birthdays.

I want to hold on to that.

Sometimes when I am scrolling through my Facebook Feed (doom-scrolling they call it), I come upon statements like: “Not a dime of foreign aid while there is a single homeless veteran.”

And I have to agree with the sentiment of helping our veterans.  All gave some, some gave all.  

We owe them.

We owe them, but this is not an either-or thing.

The quote “Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can” is often attributed to John Wesley.  This is probably a misattribution, but we don’t know that he didn’t say it, and it makes Methodists happy to think he did.

Doing good has a way of spreading in unexpected ways.  God’s imagination is better than our imagination.  Helping in foreign lands might unwittingly help ours.  Some of the businesses moving in around Centro Medico Bautista were North American-owned chains.  The little pennies put in the red-topped houses are coming back as dollars to North American corporations.

There’s nothing wrong with that.  The sick are still being healed, but the big McDonald’s across the street is making some money.

I can hear the traffic out my window.  Asuncion is beginning to wake up on this Saturday morning.  I think I will make a circle to get a cup of coffee from that little place behind Centro Medico Bautista.

Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like” the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. Search for him by name on YouTube.