The Value of Giving Things Away

My mom had a variety of mobility assistance items, for people who have physical handicaps, which I had to sort through and get rid of this year.  That include a motorized scooter, walkers, and other accessories.  Her condition was not overly limiting, so the items were rarely used, and are practically brand new.  Most of them are quite pricey to acquire new, even though the cost to manufacture them can't be very high, but they have nearly zero resale value.

One reason for that could be the limited market for them, but there seems to be some other factor at play.  The resell value is so low, only because insurance will pay for new ones, for anyone who needs them.  (Private insurance in my Mom's case, and Medicare in the cases of most older people who need them.)  So no one is out actually buying these items, and with no competition between suppliers to attract the actual consumers of these products, the prices must be artificially inflated.  (Which I suspect is true of all of medical care at this point.)

But they are designed to be used by the disadvantaged, the widows, the lame, and the blind.  Biblically, those are the people who it is most important for us to help out and assist.  "Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress."  (James 1:27a)

So I wanted to find a way to provide these items, which I have no use for, to people who really need them.  That ended up being much more challenging than I would have imagined.  I eventually was able to connect with someone who runs a support group for people with my Mom's specific disability, and even HE wasn't sure what to do with them.  But I figured he was much more likely to come across individuals who are in need of those types of things, so while they may not have found their way to help out new owners yet, I have given them to him to distribute.  He was pretty surprised that I was ready to give away things so valuable, especially to someone I didn't know, but I have no idea what else he thought I could otherwise do with them.

Maybe he will sell them on secret-black-market-for-medical-devices that I know nothing about, and pocket the proceeds.  Who knows?  But that is between him and God.  I did my part, and found the best conduit I could, to get them into the hands of people who really need them.  They sure weren't helping anyone out while collecting dust in my Mom's garage for a year.  The same could be said for a variety things God has provided in our lives, but is more extreme in this case, because of the lack of utility they provide to anyone else.  The "I might need that someday" line of thinking really doesn't apply, the way it could to say: a savings account.  Anyhow, that particular talent has been invested as well as I could, and the result of that is up to God, not me.  It always is, that fact just isn't always so clearly obvious.