Stepping over the threshold of the tattered screen door and into the entry way of the soup kitchen my nose recoiled; this didn't smell like a nice clean food panty that I had helped out with before. Instead it was a rodent, roach and who knows what else infested hole in the wall. A place I couldn't imagine the health department keeping open let alone eating from.
As I began to give my help, I couldn't help but worry about my own health as I touched and moved the expired food. I soon met and learned that most of the people volunteering where people who received food from their hot meal program and often bags of food from the food pantry. As the day continued and I got to meet those that ran the program, fill the bags of food for those coming and stand in the 95+ heat of the day in the kitchen sweating like a pig, I realized that although this was sub-par by my standards it was for these people an amazing gift.
Finding compassion for this people and this food pantry might seem like an easy task for anyone who read above...but for me I felt pity. I felt sad. I felt terribly lost because I couldn't imagine eating or needing to eat this. I find compassion for those who go to a food pantry in the white - middle class churches that give out food like mac and cheese and cereal. I can put myself in their place and I can sympathize, understand to their level, where they are coming from and have always longed to change their situation. But when it comes to the poorer then poor - that is where I find myself allowing pity and sadness to over shadow the love and compassion that Jesus and my faith is asking of me.
I think that it is this pity and sadness that continues to allow the truly poor to exist. Because even those of us who struggle to pay our bills can't imagine eating day old food that may have had the maggots on top scraped off -- because no one should.
And if you don't think that there is true poor in your own country, neighborhood or town then you need to open yourself up and find compassion for those living around you who are struggling.
The country is not in a good place. When I was in high school I was making $9.10 an hour at a retail store and paying less then $1.00 for gas. Only 13 years later, the minimum wage is only $7.25 and gas is over $3.00 a gallon. That math just doesn't add up. Even with a decent job, people are struggling.
The government, big business, everyone in fact needs to stop pitying each other, pitying the poor and giving over a few pieces of stake every once and awhile but instead needs to find room for compassion and love. Only then, would we see changes like fair wages and CEO who took realistic incomes. Only then would we see the Kingdom on Earth.
