The Circle of Love

"Train up children in the way they should go, and when they are old, they will not depart from it." Proverbs 22:6

There are these seven children that I love, seven children that many others in our church have come to love.  We met them a year-and-a-half ago when they landed with their mother at a shelter for homeless women and children where we were doing some volunteer work.  They had arrived at the shelter after spending a couple of months without a home--for a period of time living in an abandoned building and then in their car.  It was desperation that finally drove them through the doors of the shelter.  Their single mother was at the end of her rope.  They had nothing but the dirty clothes on their back at the time, no food, no diapers for the youngest ones who were 2-years-old and a 1-year-old, no formula, no baby food, no sippy cups.  They were dirty and starving and shell-shocked from the trauma and chaos of their lives.  Ever so slowly, we began to build a relationship, to offer love without judgment as much as that was humanly possible.  It began with getting some church volunteers to be here when we brought the children to the church some afternoons and began to play with them, to read to them, to have snack for them, to give out hugs and smiles, to provide hands to hold and laps to sit in and arms to embrace.  Then it was bringing them all to the Vacation Bible School at the church.  Slowly, ever so slowly, the mom began to trust us and to entrust her children to our care.  When she finally got an apartment in one of Birmingham's housing projects, we helped her move and helped furnish and stock the place.  That happened early in the summer a year ago and throughout the next couple of months, we tried to offer her respite from the constant presence of seven children all under the age of 8 and offer the children a place of fun, safety, nourishment and love by bringing them to the church a couple of times each week through the summer.  When fall came, we invited the children to come to the church every Wednesday night for dinner and children's programming.  Slowly, ever so slowly, the children began to see IPC as "their" church.  During the academic year last year, the youngest child, 1-and-a-half and then 2-years-old came to the IPC Day School four days a week.  This child, who had developmental delays because he had been so premature, began to blossom and grow in confidence and ability and joy.  The children developed a full and easy trust of us.  Small hands slipped easily into ours; little arms wrapped around our necks for love and safety; our laps were full of children wanting to be held.  We just kept trying to love--to pour love out on them and they returned it a hundred-fold.

The life they live at home has alternately been stable, and chaotic. Both parents have been in and out of jail; both parents have taken steps forward and back several times.  The apartment has sometimes been without food or utilities.  They have seen some violence in their home and in their neighborhood.  And we have continued to try to love--not just the children but their often-dysfunctional parents.  We have been frustrated, joyful, despairing, proud, disappointed, overwhelmed, beyond our abilities and our comfort zones.  We have learned more than any of us wanted to know about the complexity of life lived in generational poverty in our city.  But we have kept loving as best we could.  And here is the miracle: it is making a difference.  The mom is now in a GED class four days a week, moving toward taking the test in early December.  The children are all in school and doing well.  Life is stable, for the most part.  The periods of chaos are much fewer and much farther apart than they once were.  Just last night, as we were preparing for them to go home after dinner and programming at the church, I looked around for two of the boys who were not standing right with the rest of the children and they were a few feet away, kneeling in prayer.  What their prayers were about, only God knows.  But they knew they were in a place where prayer was not just okay but encouraged; they knew that they were safe and loved.  But here is the most important thing of all: when we first met these children at the homeless shelter, on one ride back to the shelter after an afternoon of playing at the church we were singing songs in the church van, one of which was "Jesus Loves Me" and one of the children said: "No he don't."  And here they were, a year-and-a-half later, not only believing that God loves them, but that God listens to them, knows them by name, hears their prayers.  That can only be the result of the transforming love of God in Jesus Christ.

There are these seven children that I love--that so many of us at IPC have come to love and spend time with and we have received the deep joy and blessing of being loved in return.  You can be part of the circle of love with this family.  We need folks who are willing to hold hands, to hug, to offer laps, to sit with a child at dinner on a Wednesday night and talk about the day, to read to the children, to sing with them, to laugh and giggle and tickle, to dry tears, to play and be silly, to mentor and give boundaries, to help children see that there are choices they can make that can help lead out of generational poverty, to encourage the mom and dad in their attempts to move forward and to build a better, fuller, more abundant life for their family, to help these parents experience what it is like to be loved without judgment and condition--to know what it is to be forgiven and to have a second or a third or a fourth chance, to give the whole family the experience of grace, to simply share the love and joy of life lived together in a family of faith.  They are part of our family.  They are our children--yours and mine.  I can promise you so much love in return.  If you want to be a part of this circle of love, call me or email me.  There is always room for more loving arms to hold and be held in return.  It is a beautiful thing.

I was hungry and you gave Me something to eat...

"Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry, and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me...Truly I tell you, when you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me."  Matthew 25: 34-36, 40 NRSV

One day this summer, the familiar "ping" of an arriving text message sounded on my phone.  I picked it up and looked at the screen only to see a photograph of an empty refrigerator with a message from one of the children who has been a part of our second grade reading tutoring program (STAIR) at Independent Presbyterian Church that said: "Could you help us?  We are out of food. I didn't know who else to call." This family of four children who live with their grandmother had been living with almost no food in the house for some days before one of the children finally sent the photograph and text asking for help.  The Site Coordinator for STAIR at IPC and I piled into the car and went on a shopping spree, trying to buy enough basic food supplies to last them for about a week and we took it to their house in Kingston, a part of Birmingham that is near the airport where all of the families live in poverty.

This story is not an unusual one.  It must repeat in thousands of homes across our city every day.  I cannot count the number of times I have been to the apartment of a family of seven children being raised by their single mother in a housing project in North Birmingham--a family we have been building a relationship with for a year-and-a-half--and have found the refrigerator and the pantry completely bare of food, and hungry children climbing all over me and asking me to take them to get something to eat.  It happens every month for this family.  They receive right at $800 in food stamps each month to feed eight people--though sometimes that number swells because other relatives occasionally end up sleeping on the floor or the sofa of their apartment.  This family routinely runs out of food a week before their SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program--formerly called Food Stamps) card is replenished.  And so, for at least one week of every month, the children go to bed at night hungry and get up and go to school the next morning even hungrier.  We have learned this reality and now try to supplement their food in that last week.  But the mother of this family does not want to have to ask for help.  She longs to be able to be independent and to feed her children adequately on her own.

I cannot truly imagine the pain of any parent who must look into the hungry eyes of the child they love because they are struggling to make ends meet, to put food on the family table.  The seven children from the family I just mentioned come to our church every Wednesday night for dinner and programming and I have watched these children I have grown to love so much, and the children in our STAIR after-school program during their week-day snack, wrap food in napkins and stuff it in pockets and backpacks to take home to share with other members of the family.  Seeing a child hoard food because they do not know where their next meal will come from is heartbreaking.  In our land of plenty, how is it possible that some of our children still live with hunger?

Every single day, men, women and children; young, middle-aged and elderly; working and out of work; African American, white and Hispanic; able-bodied and disabled come into our office in Community Ministries at Independent Presbyterian Church.  They come, not because they want to but because they have no other choice if they are going to be able to feed their family.  They come to ask for help.  Every day, we give bags of non-perishable groceries to as many people as we can help out of our church's Food Pantry, along with a voucher they can take to a local food bank for a box of fresh and a box of frozen food.  Without fail, people express their gratitude with smiles, hugs, words and sometimes, with wordless tears.  Some of these folks, like a wheelchair-bound man today, return to volunteer and help us put donated food on the Pantry shelves--they want to do whatever they can to "Pay it Forward."  I see Christ in their eyes--looking back at me out of their often tired and care-worn faces.  "I was hungry and you gave me something to eat."

You can be a part of feeding some of God's hungry children in two very simple, but concrete ways.  You can set aside some time every so often to do some grocery shopping for our Food Pantry--we need all kinds of non-perishable food items and our shelves can always use more food!  We need canned meats, fruits, vegetables and soups; rice and beans; peanut butter and jelly; pasta and pasta sauces; breakfast items such as cereal, grits and oatmeal; dry and long-shelf-life liquid milk.  You can buy some of those items and bring them by the church to help stock our Food Pantry---even just a couple of cans can help!  You can also make financial contributions to IPC Social Services for the Food Pantry--we use these contributions to buy the vouchers for the fresh and frozen food boxes.  You can volunteer to come by and help us put donated food on the Pantry shelf or make up the grocery bags of non-perishable items we give to our neighbors who come to us for help.  There are so many ways you can take part in following Christs's call--"I was hungry and you gave me something to eat."  If you have questions, please call or email me!  Thank you ahead of time for your generosity to your hungry neighbors.

"Let the Children Come to Me"

“But Jesus said, ‘Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of heaven belongs.”  Matthew 19:14 NRSV

It has been “the week of the children” in Community Ministries at Independent Presbyterian Church (IPC) this past week.  Our STAIR program (Start the Adventure in Reading) has begun its reading tutoring program with second graders from Hayes K-8 School and we will have large groups of wonderful 2^nd graders at IPC four afternoons a week, from Monday-Thursday.  The children will be brought to IPC from Hayes K-8 on the bus, they will have a delicious, healthy snack prepared by our IPC Kitchen staff, and then will settle down for an hour of one-on-one tutoring to help improve their reading before boarding the bus to get back to the school to be picked up by parents at 5:00.  This wonderful program is 14 years old this year, and through the non-profit, STAIR of Birmingham, Inc.,  this program is now serving children at nine sites around the Birmingham area.  What a joy it is to have bright-eyed, eager, happy children on the 1^st floor for that hour-and-a-half four days a week!  We are so grateful to our many volunteers who make the STAIR program possible.  Each child comes two days a week, and each child has two tutors that are assigned to them all year long, so STAIR is not only about tutoring children to improve their reading skills, it is about relationship building and mentoring, and most of all, it is about love—the love that develops between these children and their tutors.  We have tutors of every age—from teenagers to octogenarians and everywhere in between.  We have tutors who take a couple of hours off from the work that pays their bills to come to the church and spend time with a child; we have teenagers who leave a busy day at school and come straight to IPC to help a child learn; we have folks who have retired from their working life who continue to find ways to be vitally involved in their community—so many people who take time out of their busy schedules to brighten the life of a child.  We also have volunteers who set out the healthy snack prepared by our church kitchen every day and who stay with the children during snack time; substitute tutors who pitch in when regular tutors are out of town or sick or have some other complication that keeps them from being present on a given day; we have special event volunteers like those who help with the Christmas party or at STAIR family dinners.  There are many ways you can help with this important work!  And I promise it is also great fun, and you get paid in hugs and smiles and love, which makes you rich, indeed.

Also this past week, we heard the very sad news from our dear friends at the Mwandi Mission in Zambia about a fire that destroyed the storage facility at the Orphan and Vulnerable Children Center (OVC) at the mission.  The village of Mwandi, Zambia is a village of about 10,000 people, who live in traditional mud huts, with thatch roofs, with no electricity or running water.  This sub-Saharan nation has had a high incidence of HIV/AIDS and though wider access to treatment has reduced the mortality rate of AIDS, and education is reducing the number of new infections, there are perhaps as many as 1,500 orphans living in the village.  The OVC feeds 300 orphans each day, providing what may be the only meal these children receive in a day.  There were no injuries in the fire, for which we are very grateful, but all of the food, medicines, basic supplies, clothing, and every other supply you can imagine was were lost.  Many members of IPC have traveled to Mwandi as part of the IPC Africa Mission Teams over the years, and many of us have spent considerable time helping with feeding and devotions with the children at the OVC and with the staff.  The sadness we feel at this tremendous loss for them is huge.  We responded right away with some funds from our General Benevolence account at IPC, but as the staff of the OVC assesses the total damage, the cost of rebuilding, and the needs moving forward, we will have more opportunities to help. 

Jesus said, “Let the children come to me, and do not stop them; for to such as these the kingdom of heaven belongs.”  When we reach out to children in need with the love of Christ, when we offer them a cup of cold water, a plate of food, an hour of one-one-one time in his name, we come a bit closer to that Kingdom.  I can promise you that any time you spend with these precious, disadvantaged children, will increase your joy and fill your heart with love.  And I also promise that as you look into the eyes of a child—across the ocean in Africa or just around the corner in North Avondale—you will be seeing the face of Christ.  If you want to know how to get involved in either of these ministries, please call me!