Let it rain

The guard at the library said, “They were waiting today at 2 O’Clock.  Line keeps getting longer”.

It was raining at 2pm.  And 3pm.  And 4pm when the meal started.  And straight through and after.

You have to be really hungry to stand in the pouring rain for a hot plate of food.

You have to be desperate to wait hours for help getting an ID card.

Today was one of those days where the magnitude of what we showed up in puddles.

A soaked man in a wheel chair.  3 women with their 3 drenched children.  Over 150 came out with needs that obviously couldn’t be met on dryer ground.

One guy was having a hard time talking because the rain was dodging his hat, pelting his face sideways, his mouth literally filling with water.

And we have had colder days and even rainier.  But never with the crowd we had today.  Desperation.  And even with all those that we were able to help, and being soaked myself, I was mostly unmoved by it all.

350 hot dogs + 45 pounds of pasta + 150 pb&j sanwiches + desserts +110 checks…..in a flash flood.  Still, it wasn’t until the car was loaded and I had scanned the Free Library’s documentary section that I was struck by it.  As I walked out of the Library towards the area where we had just served the meal, I glanced and saw the vacant look of a man sitting soaked on the floor.  Though we see thousands a year, the loneliness of that moment resonated.  It was one of those storms where if you had a safe dry place to go, you would have been there.  And he just sat there in the library corridor.  Alone.  Nowhere to go.

And it is in those moments where I am reminded that what we do is more than a program.  If only for a little while, he had a place to be with others.  We didn’t solve his problems or remove his pain, but we filled his hunger spot.

There is no end to the need.  Even Jesus said, “you will always have the poor among you.”  That clearly isn’t a call to ignore poverty…..but to make sure that the poor are “among” us.