SignPost Holy Thursday—Food Pantry

Psalm 116:1-2, 12-19

Sometime during our middler (first) year in seminary, one of my classmates realized that most of the families on campus were living below the poverty line. Many of the families with small children qualified for the WIC program. Some of the families had little or no food in their cupboards. Stan went to the campus council and proposed that we start a food pantry in partnership with Second Harvest on campus for the sake of student families and for other needful families in our neighborhood.

A garage under the mission house was provided by the seminary. Drywall was installed and painted for cleanliness. The floor was scrubbed. Electrical work was done to provide adequate lighting and electricity for a refrigerator and freezer. Now we needed to find the appliances for food goods that had to be chilled and frozen.

The word went out through the network of spouses that worked off campus, and soon we had a refrigerator, but the freezer seemed to elude us. One night we heard that there was a freezer available on a farm, thirty miles east of school. We just needed some way to move and transport it.

I volunteered my truck. How hard could this be? Five of us got together and drove out. When we got there, we found an old freezer. Did I mention that it was old? It might have been one of the first International Harvester (IH) freezers ever made. Most of us didn’t know that IH even made freezers. It had steel sides, and it weighed a ton. With all five of us lifting, we barely got it up into the truck. It almost filled the bed. We didn’t bother to tie it down, because there was no way that it was going anywhere.

We were assured that it worked, so back to seminary we went.

Fortunately, the space for the food pantry had been a garage. We backed the truck in and off loaded the thing. Two days later, with a new coat of paint and some vigorous scrubbing with bleach, we plugged it in. Hallelujah! It worked.

I have no idea how many families benefitted from that pantry, but it addressed many of the immediate challenges to families on campus and reached into the community around the seminary for several years.

This day we remember the meal Jesus shared with his disciples and consider the abundance of food we have and our failure to share that abundance with all of God’s children.

Prayer

Lord, you teach us through your ministry to care for the poor, the widow, orphan and stranger; to lift up the lowly and feed the hungry. Help us live your servant ways. Amen