Back in March, Nashville had just had a tornado that swept through town and left damage to homes, businesses, and utilities, with fatalities. On Friday the electricity had just come back on at my favorite food pantry and homeless outreach center, The Little Pantry That Could, in North Nashville.
That night at Worship Service at The Cookery, a Bible-based, all-inclusive culinary arts training program for homeless men, as well as a worship family in itself, I heard in prayer during the music, “Go out and pray with people in the street, where they are.”
I didn’t know what that directive meant that night, but I knew it was clear and significant.
For more than a year, I had been amazed at the work done in both these wonderful oases in the desert of our city’s homeless (and food shortage or food insecurity) landscape. This desert isn’t one where people or their beauty or import are lacking, but it’s one that just shouldn’t exist at all.
I believe wholeheartedly that every person in the United States of America deserves to live in a home, one with walls and a roof and doors that they can lock if they so choose. Most of the rest of us do.
The week after the tornado, the news of the coronavirus desolated the city’s downtown streets in a way I’ve never seen before. The emptiness was eerie and felt unsafe. Crowds are usually around.
That week what I had heard in prayer made perfect and more-than-real sense to me. People and the city as a whole needed prayer.
After weeks of a tentative start, first driving through the city’s downtown streets and then walking around praying, I volunteered to take lunch out to the homeless, and we prayed with the men and women on the street.
When the virus rules seemed to indicate that I couldn’t volunteer, I started taking simple meals out, so as not to neglect the needs of these men and women without homes or a place to stay. And I always asked if they wanted to pray.
And did they! Almost everyone, to a person, said, “Yes!” and moved immediately into reverent silence, with heads bowed and food waiting at the side. Often raised in the church, these homeless friends of mine quote scripture at an impressive rate and with depth and knowledge.
The prayer was needed, along with the simple food, in a time of more scarcity than usual.
And so, with these basic steps and simple, genuine caring, this ministry for the homeless, one that had been in the process of forming on a spiritual level for years, was born.
I ask that this blog be a testimonial to God and His Power and Glory, and to what He wants to be written here.
He knew what He was doing when He gave me that directive while I was listening in prayer.
And He knows where He wants this ministry to go, with people coming back to Him and having their lives, homes, health, and community restored.
As for those of us who aren’t homeless? I know He wants us restored, as well, to the loving, caring, generous community He wants us to be, remembering that we are at one with the body of Christ, and therefore, called to take care of people in the way that we’re meant to in this country.
It’s just a start, and I know there’s more to come.
All the Glory and Honor and Praise be to God. In Your Name, Jesus. Amen.
~ Julie