Kingdom Victories

Pandemics change things. House of the Harvest has been no different. When Madison County, Alabama first went into alert in March of 2020, we made changes just like everyone else...with the safety of people in mind. After all, we were squeezing anywhere from fifty to sixty volunteers and 200 families they were serving onto less than a half acre campus. COVID was going to make this really complicated. 

Thanks to Chris Gunnels, principal at Harvest Elementary, we were given permission to move to the school just up the road. We immediately started developing new routines. God always knows what we need before we need it, and this time proved to be no different, as just a month before David Vess at 53 Hardware had given me a covered trailer. We wouldn’t have been able to make it happen without that trailer. So every Wednesday night a faithful team from our church, the Light, would come out unload the delivery and load up trailers to go out to Harvest Elementary on Saturday morning. We set up a drive through delivery service through the school car rider line and created a no contact COVID operating procedure. 

A year later, several of our faithful volunteers sat on the back deck of our house to discuss when life becomes normal again at House of the Harvest. The general consensus for us, we miss the people. We miss the interactions. We miss the ministry. We didn’t start House of the Harvest to feed people. We started it to embrace people...impact lives...change perspectives. We started it to be a place of ministry. A place that gives food...yes. But also a place that gives love, brings hope, and stirs spiritual awakenings that maybe churches in our culture have a hard time stirring any more. Jesus took the Kingdom to the people...the poor people, the sick people, the blind people, the children, and the broken. Jesus cried out to the weary and the heavy laden, the ones in need of rest. 

So as we sat around on Sunday evening talking about what we missed...everyone had the same message...interactions with people. An enemy used COVID to create separation in all our lives. He used it to bring depression, anxiety, and loneliness. He used it to make us ask ourselves questions that create all those emotions that don’t come from the Spirit of God. And even our Sunday evening group of committed, sacrificial, faithful followers left that Sunday evening with questions. Are we still making a difference? Are we still touching lives? Are we still doing ministry?

Yesterday morning, not a week removed, I was called over to a car in line as it was being loaded. “They want to talk to you,” shouted a friendly voice. I walked over to the car and leaned down to the window. It was an elderly couple. They both smiled real big and handed me an envelope. “We want you to have this. You all have meant so much to us. It isn’t much but we want you to know we appreciate you.” I have done this before. I mean at times, I have had people leave our building and stop me to hand me the change in their pocket. I tell them thank you and every little bit helps. After leaving, I open the envelope to remove $100...no doubt part of their stimulus money that I would have rather them have kept, but they would’ve rather given it to me. I’ll let them this time. The message was very clear to me. The enemy is strong...but in the hearts of men, the Kingdom is still prevailing. .