Can You Change the World?
By Karen M. Leet
Looking to volunteer
in my community, I settled on the local food bank. As a busy stay-at-home Mom I needed something
that fit my family’s scheduling needs, and I could take my preschool daughter
when I worked at the food center. I
would be sorting and stacking donations and answering the phone in case of an
emergency food need.
I took along a
blanket for my daughter to play on while I sorted and stacked cans. She had toys, snacks and coloring books to
keep her happily occupied.
My first call
came. I jotted down notes to fill a food
need. Somewhere between taking the phone
call and filling bags with food, it hit me ─ these were real people
desperately in need of food. Hungry
people in our own nation, in the midst of our own community, in a time when
everyone I knew seemed to have plenty of everything.
Each order I filled
touched my heart. I didn’t know family
names. I didn’t need to. A third party, an agency representative
called in the order and picked up the food.
But nothing for me was impersonal about the
process. Gathering food from the
shelves, I thought about the family waiting for this food. I thought about the meals they would prepare
and what they would need. No point
sending them a box of macaroni and cheese if I didn’t include milk and butter
for making it; same thing with pancake mix.
I read the instructions on the packages and made sure each meal was
doable.
A call came for a
single person stranded in town with no stove, no refrigerator and no way to
prepare meals. I prowled the food bank
in search of nutritious meals that wouldn’t need cooking or refrigeration.
Another call named a
family involved in a car wreck. Some
members were hospitalized. The rest were
waiting in a small apartment neat the hospital.
They had no money, no food.
Whatever I gathered for them would be all they had. I chose carefully, thinking what would help
them the most.
My detachment from
other people’s hunger went out the window.
Before, I had contributed a few cans at a collection barrel at the
grocery and thought that was enough. Now
when I donated food I thought of what families like my own would need. I chose protein or complete meals in a
package or can.
Some day there will be no suffering, no pain,
no sorrow, no hunger.
But today I know God wants me to reach out to others in every way I can.
Whether you
volunteer to fill a gap or you buy an extra can of food with each grocery order
to donate, you can be part of the solution to hunger in your community right
now. All of us working together can help
real people survive real and terrible times in their lives.
First published in Today’s Pentecostal Evangel Magazine,