…Food is important to me and my family. It is where we get nourished and spiritually fed. And that’s wonderful.

Then I go to my supervised ministry at Open Arms where I encounter people who are poor. Poor like the widow in the story of Elijah who fed him from her last bit of flour and oil. These are people who do not always know where their next meal is coming from. They do have food stamps and food pantries. This is our countries way of taking care of the poor like God asked. However, these resources do not go that far.

I do not know why I never realized the poverty around me before I worked at Open Arms. I have worked in soup kitchens before and I have studied poverty. Maybe this realization came from actually sitting down with the clients who come through and looking at their finances with them; realizing that there really was no that they can move money around to find ways to feed themselves. This is a harsh reality.

So I have these two worlds. One where I cook free food for people who can probably afford to pay for it. And I truly take joy out of cooking it for them and marveling about the miracle of food. My other world is where I come face to face with people who do not have enough to eat. It started to make me question how this could be. How could I like with this dichotomy? Where was God in all of this?