On failing to receive hospitality
On the way to the soup kitchen, I met a man with a loaf of bread.
I was on the train early one Saturday morning, making my way to volunteer at a soup kitchen. About one or two stops into the trip, I noticed a man and a woman, each dressed in rumpled clothing, sitting next to me with two big grocery bags. I hadn’t paid close attention to them at first, but the noise they were making when rustling through the bags made them hard to ignore.
The man pulled out a loaf of Wonder Bread and set it on his lap. The woman pulled out a package of bologna and little packets of mayonnaise and mustard, and they proceeded to use their laps as a table on which to prepare this meal. At first, I was a little incredulous. They’re making sandwiches on the train? Can they do that? But I quickly stopped worrying if any regulations were being broken because I assumed they were homeless and simply making a meal, so who was I to stop them? I closed my eyes to see if I could sleep a bit more before coming to my stop, where I would make my way to volunteer and do a Good Christian Deed.
A couple of stops later, however, the man with the bread nudged me. I opened my eyes and saw that he was holding out a bologna sandwich for me.
