Why Won't God Help Me

It was only early morning when the sweltering heat from the rising sun took its toll on poor Lil’ Jimmy.  While playing in the backyard, Lil’ Jimmy lost his asthma kit and lay coughing, desperately trying to find it so he could get some air into his lungs. The country air around him made it difficult to breathe. His face turned pale and his eyes blood red.  His asthma kit had fallen from his pocket, without him noticing it and was camouflaged by the grass that sprouted up all around him. He was required to inhale three to four times daily.  Unknowingly, Lil’ Jimmy was about to have an asthma attack and no one would be able to hear him with all the commotion going on in front of his house. 

The noise in the front yard went unabated as neighbors and passersby joined in the ever-growing crowds.  Tempers flared in the blazing tropical heat of the early morning Jamaican sun.  Any spark at this moment could start a riot.  Even motorists stopped their cars to watch.  It was almost 9:00a.m., a time when most people should have been at work, but instead, most of them joined in the fray, yelling, screaming, shouting, and offering their opinions.  In his eagerness to get first hand knowledge, one biker who rode up to the scene almost hit an elderly man standing nearby.  The old man gave the biker a wicked glare but did not say a word.  His attention was focused to the front of Lil’ Jimmy’s house.   There was too much excitement.  Nevertheless when the biker inquired as to the early morning’s fracas, the old man was only too willing to oblige. 

            “It seems the landlord has been trying for months to evict this family from his property but they won’t budge”, the old man answered.

“Why, what did they do wrong?” the biker asked eagerly. 

“They won’t pay the rent”, was the old man’s reply. “What else did you think? Now the landlord is here for the tenth time and boy are they putting up a fight”, the old man continued.

The tenants did not want to move because they had no money and nowhere else to go.  The old man’s knowledge of the incident was correct because he had lived in this small town of about two thousand people all his life.  He knew almost everything about everyone and all that goes on in this community.  He knew the four tenants who were living there and had often wondered how they managed to survive for so long when none of them worked.