Years ago, I invited my husband’s best friend “Bee” to speak to my 8th grade students.
Bee used that time to encourage them with stories from his own childhood.
Having known him for only a short time, I hadn’t heard many of the deeply personal details he shared that day, like how he was abandoned for days at a time with no food at all.
He had their full attention.
He described breaking into his neighbor’s house to steal just enough food to make his stomach stop hurting. Something he often chose from their pantry was potato chips, and loaf bread.
Not knowing what else to do with it, he made potato chip sandwiches.
Bee has a gift of delivering the most sobering, heart-rending stories in a humorous way that’s both emotionally survivable but profoundly moving.
It’s always a miracle to me the things survivors are able to laugh about. Indeed, it may be a superpower.
Many of my students could relate to Bee’s stories, so the impact of his loving encouragement did not soon wear off.
Sometime later, we invited Bee over for lunch. My mama used to make a delicious recipe in the slow-cooker, so I borrowed it to impress our guest…
He loved it. As we all sat around the table enjoying the creamy shredded chicken on warm buns, Bee complimented the meal and asked me how to make it.
I was happy to share Mama’s recipe, until I felt all the color disappear from my face in abject horror as I named off each ingredient…
It’s a very easy recipe, I remember saying. All that’s in it is shredded boiled chicken, cream of chicken soup, and—
Um, a bag of crushed potato chips.
Bee was unfazed, but I was utterly mortified as I realized I’d just fed the beloved soul a potato chip sandwich.
Only I could manage that, of all the recipes in all the world, but I did.
Thank God for Bee’s laughter!
I’m no longer in the classroom, but he is still very busy encouraging kids from his own well of experience, because the children here are poor.
Not all of them, of course. And in fact, they’re very hard to spot because kids are brave, resilient, and adaptive.
It takes a vigilant heart to identify the ones hiding among us who often go unnoticed, until the keen eye of someone who cares detects a problem.
A foster mom recently told me that summers are quiet, but when school starts, foster homes are suddenly overwhelmed with children.
In ignorance I asked her the reason for that, and she looked away as if to hide the faces of children who immediately came to her mind, as if I might see them in her eyes, and said, Because over the summer, there’s no one to see the problem. When school starts, teachers see.
Teachers see.
I cannot imagine having to pick up the phone to call for help because of the things teachers see.
So there is this problem of hungry children all around us, but there is also a way to help, and it’s very simple.
Feed them.
We could spend a lot of time suggesting plans to other people about how they could use their empty kitchens and fellowship halls to feed children, or point fingers at arms crossed in stiffened apathy because they refuse to help supply food pantries for “people who come to pick up food driving nicer cars than we do.”
I’ve heard it before, and I understand.
But for the children’s sake, let’s talk about what we can do.
I live in Alabama, so what I’m about to share with you will be to my neighbors here, but I hope you’ll be inspired by this work to start something similar in your area.
There’s a mama of a regular family here with kids and bills and hectic schedules of their own, who realized there are children whose only meal is provided at school—they don’t have anything to eat when they get home.
While we’re eating leftovers all weekend or dining out after church, these children are missing their free/reduced lunch portions. They’re hungry.
Do you see?
Her name is Sarah-Jennifer, and she takes individual bags of snacks to schools for impoverished children to eat on weekends and holidays—lots of them. To learn more about her work, please visit the link below or find her on Facebook at Sidney’s Safe! Foundation.
She makes it work by limping along on donated food.
That’s where you and I get to help.
That’s where we take our offering to the grocery store and buy these child-friendly items: protein bars, granola bars, peanut butter crackers, cheese crackers, canned spaghetti & meatballs, ravioli, Beefaroni, chicken noodle & tomato soups, chicken & stars, Pop Tarts, Vienna sausages, beenie weenies, regular size jars of peanut butter, saltine crackers, Mac/cheese, Ramon noodles.
And deliver them to her, or to me so I can take them to her.
Her website also details how else you can help and why she does what she does.
People like Bee, and Sarah-Jennifer, and many others (I’m looking at you, Mrs. Fay…) have seen poverty, and rather than walk away unmoved, they move.
Could it be, when Jesus walked past that mountain saying we could move it if we want to, He wasn’t thinking of a big, oversized pile of dirt, but rather the prayers of children eating stolen potato chip sandwiches and the impossible mountains they face?
Perhaps The Feeder of Multitudes was inviting us to do what He did—and more, yes?—by walking into someone’s hunger and saying to their mountain, Move.
If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will tell this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.
~ Jesus
{Matthew 17:20}
I assure you: The one who believes in Me will also do the works that I do. And he will do even greater works than these, because I am going to the Father.
~ Jesus
{John 14:12}
Even if I… have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.
~ Paul of Tarsus
{1 Cor.13:2}
Please partner with Sarah-Jennifer by visiting http://www.sidneyssafe.org