Feed My Sheep

Last Sunday our church did something I've never seen or heard of a church doing before. Instead of having church, we went out into the community to be the church. Projects had been lined up for the 500 volunteers that included everything from landscaping in the nearby hispanic trailer park to sorting food and stocking shelves at the local food bank.

Tony spent all of Saturday and Sunday morning with wonderful men in our church building a new wheelchair ramp for an older lady who's ramp was rickety and rolled straight into the street. Hope there aren't any cars coming if her brakes fail!  Her new ramp, built with new lumber and actually meeting code, now has a landing and a turn so she won't end up in the road if she loses control. It was a very impressive project, but between the lady and the group of men who did the work, I think they'd all agree, they were the ones who felt blessed when the project was over.

I spent the morning at the local co-op food bank packing cookies into packs of 20. Other people there landscaped, weeded the garden and sorted and stocked shelves. It was a sobering thing to wander the isles and see the shelves, some of them bare, and think of the mother who's children are hungry and she can't feed them. I can't imagine what it must feel like for your children to look at you, waiting and expecting you to care for them and you can't give them a meal because there is nothing. No food in the pantry and no money to buy more.

It brought me to tears when the ladies who work there every day told us of the great needs within the community. How kids will show up at the co-op, looking for something to eat, in tears because they are so hungry. How in one week, all the supplies we had just stocked those shelves with would be empty because so many families are in need and so few people are making contributions.

I'm ashamed to admit that very often I fail to see beyond the end of my driveway. I'm home all the time, I'm consumed with caring for my own kids and I just don't think about the people out there who are jobless, in need, hungry. Even someone who shops on a strict grocery budget, which I do, can find room to buy a dozen cans of beans every week and still have enough money to put icecream in my own stuffed freezer. It just wouldn't take much. In fact, one of the ladies said that if church members would bring one thing- a solitary can of corn- to church each week, their shelves would never run dry. It just wouldn't take that much. Less than a dollar a week.

I want to challenge myself and you to look a little further, to be a part of the community, to serve and to love as Christ loved us and gave Himself for us. To give generously because God has and continues to provide for my family. It just wouldn't take that much. For myself, I'm juggling my grocery budget. A few "cutbacks" and I can buy plenty of beans and corn and  food staples to help feed my hungry community. And I pray that my small investment in the community will also feed their hungry souls.