'Can you come help me with the thing at the house,' my brother asked.

'Do I have to?,' feigning interest.

'Mom said you had to help me.'

'I think she meant help you pour the milk in your cereal when we were kids.'

'She meant always,' he implored.

'She meant Cheerios.'

'No problem. I'll see if she's available to help me.'

'Fiiiinnnnnnne, but you're buying beers after,' I whined.

'Whatever.  Just bring your tools.' 

My brother called the other day asking for an extra set of hands.  Just like when we were kids, he had to invoke Mom in order to garner my compliance.  It's as annoying at 40 as it was at 10.

The task at hand required my height.  No special skills, just length and a screwdriver. 

'Don’t you have friends?' I punched from atop the ladder.

'Plenty.'

'Do they have skills?'

'Just opinions. And they're short.  Both unhelpful.'

'Just opinions.'

He called me because I would help.  He knew I'd whine but he also knew I'd say yes.  He invoked Mom's name, falling back to some kind of childhood flashback, a script we've run since I was old enough to take advantage of him (2 quarters is still a better a deal than a single, dirty old dollar bill, I contend).

Yet despite the melodrama, he called because his friends offered nothing more than their opinions.  While offering perspective or a phone number for a handyman has its place, real problems require real solutions.  So we did the work that had to happen in the way that work happens among men, grunting for tools and recounting the first time we tried this, learning the value of the circuit breaker.  No lectures, no lessons, no ulterior motives. Just a set of unqualified hands. 

He'll call me in the future and I'll whine and call him names and we'll do it again because that's what we do.  It's at the top of the ladder that I earn the right to offer my opinion.

The pastor at my church says that people can't hear the gospel of Jesus over the grumbling of their hungry stomach.  Love happens in met needs, through meals and yard work and flood cleanup.  Relationships begin in real space and real time, meeting real needs.  Perhaps this is why the Church created the university, orphanage and hospital (literally 'a place of hospitality') -- a physical manifestation of grace.  This is how the church has historically engaged the community and where the gospel of community comes to life -- behind a broom and beneath a ladle.

Such is the reality of grace.  Real grace.