Chicken & Dumplings
I met two men last Saturday at House of the Harvest that I had never met before. The first guy walks twelve miles to come see us every Saturday....rain or shine. He leaves his home at 5:00 AM to get to House of the Harvest by 7:00 AM. The second guy, a retired truck driver. He drove for a long time. He spent his entire life working. He didn’t make a whole lot of money, nor did his job come with a retirement plan. These days he lives off of social security. It’s only enough to barely get him by. This is an expensive place to live. Everyone is trying to squeeze more out of your pocket and into theirs, and then there is the guy who worked a slightly more than minimum wage job for his whole career...and that was the best he could do with what he had. Does he have a chance in this world we live in?
We fed over two hundred families that Saturday morning, but after talking to these two guys, I felt the Lord speaking to me. “You can’t even relate to the people you are trying to lead.” And He was right. I think a lot about Moses. His story has been a real encouragement for me over the years. God took Moses to the wilderness by himself when he fled Egypt. He used that time to prepare Moses to lead the Israelites out. What God asked Moses to do, He had already led Moses through. So when Moses was out there with all those Israelites (we are talking hundreds of thousands), he was leading them in what God had already led him through.
The message is clear...I need to be able to relate. I need to connect. I ask Him what that looks like. He replies, “For some of these people, if nobody gives them food, they don’t eat. This week, only eat what people give you.” And that moment began a journey for me that taught me how to relate a little bit more.
Middle of the week was hard. I walked to the top of the stairs as my house Wednesday morning and felt extremely tired. All I had eaten Monday was a slice of chocolate cake and Tuesday a serving of peach cobbler one of my bus drivers brought me. Wednesday morning I had little energy, felt pretty faint, and my legs were super heavy. I was pretty weak for a little while. But there are people around me that live with those feelings every day...with no option to erase them. And God taught me that they don’t just depend on Him for food, they also depend on Him for the physical and mental strength they need to overcome all those factors. Once that sunk in, faintness and weakness went away. I was journeying through the wilderness, but God was going there with me.
Friday morning I wake up, get ready, and I’m out the door. I’ve got the morning off and several things that I have to get done on an empty stomach. It’s Thanksgiving at House of the Harvest, our busiest day of the year. I go over to Horizon Elementary where Jennifer has orchestrated a food drive for parts of our meals. I get some help from her and a few dedicated fifth graders. We load up well over 2,000 items and I head out to HOH. When I get there, the Halsey truck arrives. We unload 300 turkeys and 300 pies, off the truck, out of the box and into the freezers. It takes about thirty minutes to shuffle them all around. Then I’m off to work. I feel like I have already worked. My fitbit tracks 13,000 steps and it’s only 9:30.
I run across the parking lot in the rain, jump in my truck to head to work, pause for just a second and say, “I KNOW you got something good for me today!” It wasn’t long after a got to work that a pair of little feet came wandering into my office. I look up from the paperwork I was doing in preparation for a meeting to see one of our Kindergarteners holding a tupperware container. Homemade chicken and dumplings. Those were one of my favorites growing up.
And get this...they weren’t intended for me. One of our teachers brought them for another teacher on her team. She didn’t know that the other teacher had lunch plans already, so they got sent my way. And I learn to trust a little bit more.
We handed out those 300 turkeys and pies and all the side items for a Thanksgiving meal yesterday morning. And I’m glad we did. I know how much Thanksgiving costs at my house. And I know that’s not in everyone’s budget. But whether it is or not, everyone deserves to have that meal on the table and share it with their family. God knows that and He provides it. Just like the chicken and dumplings. Just like the strength to get through the times of weakness.
I pray for more opportunities to better understand the people in our community that need to be understood. I pray for a community that works to understand the weak, the broken, and the ones that spent all their lives working hard and making little. I pray for the hearts of those who are strong to be toward those who are weak. Jesus had a heart like that and I think that is what following Him is supposed to look like.
Moses didn’t get to choose who he was leading in that wilderness. God gave him all of them. The tired, the hungry, the little babies, the ones that were hard to get along with, the mentally weak, emotionally weak, spiritually weak, all of them. They were a community. They solved their problems together and they were there for each other. They didn't leave the weak in Egypt. They all went on a journey. And it was hard but it was worth it.
And for us...God created a church so that He could have a community...a people. Not a people who would put on high quality worship services, but a people who had high quality hearts for understanding others and being there in their weakness. A people who would be there for the weak, no matter the weakness. That’s what you commit to when you commit to Jesus. A lifestyle of reaching down to the weak…emotionally, physically, mentally, spiritually. You are part of a people. A people who are on a journey together. A people who, at just the right time, deliver the chicken and dumplings.