Helping your Fellow Man

Yesterday at church the sermon was on Generosity.  The passage was Matthew 25:14-30.  The point of the passage is that everything we have really isn’t ours, we are just stewards of God’s resources.  To sum the sermon up in 4 words you could say “it is all God’s.”

As far as I know I was the only person from Willmar Electric in the congregation.  But today the entire company put the scriptures into practice and applied the concept to vacation time.

Let me back up a couple of steps.

Last week we had a 40 year old coworker undergo quadruple bypass surgery.  As if that isn’t sad enough the coworkers surgery isn’t the only health hardship facing his family.  The coworker’s high school aged son has a rare disease that has put the family in a financial position where they can’t afford to have the Dad miss months of work recovering from his surgery.

At Willmar Electric we allow people to give co-workers some of their accrued vacation time.  So we sent out an appeal laying out the situation and letting people know how they could help. 

After one day we are at over 4 weeks of donated time!!! Many employees haven’t even heard the story yet.  Some don’t have e-mail and will have to wait until Friday’s paycheck to “hear” the appeal. 

The employee is from Nebraska and many of the donations come our other offices.  Amazing.  People are giving to a person in need simply because they are generous and not a person connection.

By donating people are helping a coworker continue to not only receive a paycheck but helping him continue to maintain health insurance for the 6-8 weeks that he is likely to miss. 

The people at Willmar Electric are a real life example of generosity and a powerful message of what a group can do to help a person in need. (All without the help of the government.  I couldn’t resist the political point.)