EDITOR’S NOTE: The letter below is from Douglas Vandergraph of Fort Collins, Colorado. The views are the writer’s.
There is a quiet kind of sadness in wondering whether anyone will remember you at Christmas. It does not always show on a face. Sometimes it lives behind a door that opens less often than it once did.
Potomac Local News reported October 27 that Volunteer Prince William’s Untrim-A-Tree and Senior Basket Program had already found people to sponsor the children, while the need for senior support remained. What a revealing moment for a community. It is wonderful when children are remembered. It is also important to ask who is still waiting.
I write from Fort Collins, Colorado, not Prince William County, and I am responding to the newspaper’s published volunteer notice. As a Christian, I hear in this story a challenge straight from the words of Jesus.
In Matthew 25, Christ identifies Himself with people who were hungry, alone and in need of care. He is not asking His followers to admire compassion from a distance. He is asking whether their faith makes its way into another person’s ordinary life.
An older neighbor may need groceries or household essentials. But there is another need that cannot be packed in a basket: the assurance that somebody still sees them. A gift is meaningful; being remembered after the holiday matters, too.
The story of Anna in Luke 2 also comes to mind. She was an elderly woman of faith, and the Gospel does not treat her as someone whose best days were over. She had a place in the story of Christ’s arrival. Her age did not make her invisible to God.
Our churches and neighborhoods should reflect that truth. When holiday giving programs have plenty of volunteers for the charming photographs and the cheerful activities, are there still people willing to do the quiet work? Will someone call in January, offer a ride in February or sit and listen on an otherwise uneventful afternoon?
No program can solve loneliness for everyone, and generosity must respect the dignity and wishes of the person receiving it. But a community can resist the habit of treating older people as an afterthought.
When the final child’s name has been taken from a giving tree, perhaps that should not feel like the end of our work. Through Jesus Christ we are called to love the neighbor whose name is still there, whether anyone is watching or not.
Douglas Vandergraph
Fort Collins, Colorado
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