A not-so-random act

I needed the story I heard at church this morning, needed it to remind me of the goodness that's all around us if we look hard enough.

Just days after a brutal killing at the campus where I teach, I heard that the good people of the church I go to had dug deep into their pockets to help someone who, literally, arrived on the doorstep of the church rectory about a month ago.

A priest from Malawi, who had visited our church as part of the diocese's annual missionary appeal, showed up unannounced at the rectory to raise more money for his desperately poor parish. He e-mailed the pastor to let him know he'd be coming, then borrowed $1,600 for air fare to New York.

Well, the e-mail never arrived -- but the priest did. The diocese, meanwhile, said "no way" to a second financial appeal for the priest's parish.

That didn't stop the pastor of my church from asking his parish family if they'd be willing to help this young priest who must rely on public transportation to make his away around his massive parish, where the monthly donations are barely enough to keep body and soul together.

This morning, as I sat in church and wondered what the coming week at the university would be like in the wake of the murder that occurred there a few days ago, the pastor announced that his parishioners had donated $7,000 for the priest from Africa. In the depths of a recession, that's a remarkable sum.

Even in good times, that's a remarkable sum.

I'm grateful for people's willingness to help a stranger from a strange land, grateful for this much-needed reminder that goodness is more powerful than whatever it is that turns a heart so dark it resorts to violence.