My church encourages members to bring canned goods to worship every week to help people in need. At the start of the “Food for All” program, I took our contributions to the local charity that distributes them whenever our collection bins were full. Visiting the charity regularly inspired me. I could see the food going out as fast as it came in and I would buy a cart-load of groceries to add to our contributions every once in a while.

A new volunteer stepped up to take my place after a few years. I added my gifts to the collection bins each week, but no longer needed to visit the charity myself.

Our church secretary emailed a few weeks ago to ask if I would take the food to the charity because our bins were overflowing. I was busy and did not respond. I thought about when taking the food might be convenient every day for almost two weeks until someone else took care of it.

I felt guilty the day I saw the bins were no longer overflowing and realized that my convenience had become more important to me than helping hungry people.

I told my wife about my sense of guilt and that I was thinking of committing myself to delivering a cart-load of groceries every week. I told her I thought I could buy the groceries on Sunday afternoons and deliver them on Monday afternoons when I would be near the charity for my regular Monday workout at the gym. She offered to go shopping with me immediately to buy the first cart-load. I put her off, saying that I wanted to think about it a while longer.

I went to church today and the first scripture passage we read in worship was from Deuteronomy 15:  7 “If among you, one of your brothers should become poor, in any of your towns within your land that the Lord your God is giving you, you shall not harden your heart or shut your hand against your poor brother, 8 but you shall open your hand to him and lend him sufficient for his need, whatever it may be. 9 Take care lest there be an unworthy thought in your heart… and your eye look grudgingly on your poor brother, and you give him nothing, and he cry to the Lord against you, and you be guilty of sin. 10 You shall give to him freely, and your heart shall not be grudging when you give to him, because for this the Lord your God will bless you in all your work and in all that you undertake. 11 For there will never cease to be poor in the land. Therefore I command you, ‘You shall open wide your hand to your brother, to the needy and to the poor, in your land’ (English Standard Version).

I went to the grocery store and bought the first cart-load right after church.

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