If you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness, and your night will become like the noonday.
Isaiah 58:10I have always looked forward to the family celebration of Thanksgiving. Regardless of the ups and downs of our life, there are always blessings to count and far too many temptations on the table. This year, however, the holiday season got off to an unsettling start.
Volunteers at the local food bank were summoned to a special meeting. Given that it was a week before Thanksgiving, I assumed we would be hearing about plans for the distributions prior to Thanksgiving. In years past, we have had a flood of donations, particularly from local grocery stores, that created some interesting logistic challenges in terms of storage and distribution. Rising to the challenge required a bit of creativity and longer hours for volunteers, but always meant watching people go away with smiles and full carts.
Instead of abundance, the director soberly announced a change in distribution to adapt to a perfect storm of sorts. Rising food costs, smaller donations from local stores, and increased demand meant that we were coming up short. And not just for Thanksgiving, but for the foreseeable future. The solution to stretch our supplies was to adjust the amount given by household size. Households with less than four people would now receive between a third to half of what we have given out previously.
These changes come less than a year after cutting the number of zip codes we serve in half. We expected that restricting our service area would allow us to meet the needs of the community, particularly those people that walk or take public transportation to the food bank. However, instead of trimming our numbers and stretching our resources, the number of clients has continued to grow, with record numbers served almost every week over the past six months.
In years past, we have given out turkeys for large households and whole chickens for smaller households on top of our normal distribution. This year, there were no special holiday items to distribute. The stores were more cautious in their purchases so there was no real overstock to donate. Rising food costs and shortages produced by the heat and drought over the past growing season meant that our purchasing power from wholesale stocks was smaller.
The director told us that we were not alone in facing shortages for our clients. Food banks that make up the Feeding America network were all coming up short. Yet, I could find almost no media coverage. To date, only Reuters has covered the story about the fraying safety net for the hungry. The article by Lisa Baertlein does a nice job of laying out the challenges by food banks across the nation.
One only need to glance at the thousands of stories covering the first big shopping weekend of the Christmas season to see our misplaced attention. The media is doing a great job of generating excitement for our annual spending spree with story after story about crowds, fights over popular items, retail projections, and cash register receipts to date.
Scripture assures us that God hears the cries of those in need and expects the faithful to respond. The question is whether we can hear those cries over the din of the marketplace catering to our every whim.
Instead of abundance, the director soberly announced a change in distribution to adapt to a perfect storm of sorts. Rising food costs, smaller donations from local stores, and increased demand meant that we were coming up short. And not just for Thanksgiving, but for the foreseeable future. The solution to stretch our supplies was to adjust the amount given by household size. Households with less than four people would now receive between a third to half of what we have given out previously.
These changes come less than a year after cutting the number of zip codes we serve in half. We expected that restricting our service area would allow us to meet the needs of the community, particularly those people that walk or take public transportation to the food bank. However, instead of trimming our numbers and stretching our resources, the number of clients has continued to grow, with record numbers served almost every week over the past six months.
In years past, we have given out turkeys for large households and whole chickens for smaller households on top of our normal distribution. This year, there were no special holiday items to distribute. The stores were more cautious in their purchases so there was no real overstock to donate. Rising food costs and shortages produced by the heat and drought over the past growing season meant that our purchasing power from wholesale stocks was smaller.
The director told us that we were not alone in facing shortages for our clients. Food banks that make up the Feeding America network were all coming up short. Yet, I could find almost no media coverage. To date, only Reuters has covered the story about the fraying safety net for the hungry. The article by Lisa Baertlein does a nice job of laying out the challenges by food banks across the nation.
This summer's crop-damaging weather in the U.S. farm belt has driven up costs for everything from grain to beef. That means higher prices at the grocery store, but it also means the U.S. government has less need to buy key staples like meat, peanut butter, rice and canned fruits and vegetables to support agricultural prices and remove surpluses.
Most of the products from those government purchases are sent to U.S. food banks, which then distribute them to food pantries, soup kitchens and emergency shelters that are a lifeline for people who struggle with hunger - including low-income families, senior citizens and people with disabilities.
The decline in government donations is exacerbating the pain inflicted by stubbornly high unemployment and a lack of income growth for many low-wage workers.Kudos to Lisa Baertlein and Reuters for covering the story. With one in six Americans living in poverty, there needs to be more coverage to awaken our collective conscience as a nation. Hunger is too much of a reality in our nation. The dry statistics do not put much of a human face on that suffering.
One only need to glance at the thousands of stories covering the first big shopping weekend of the Christmas season to see our misplaced attention. The media is doing a great job of generating excitement for our annual spending spree with story after story about crowds, fights over popular items, retail projections, and cash register receipts to date.
Scripture assures us that God hears the cries of those in need and expects the faithful to respond. The question is whether we can hear those cries over the din of the marketplace catering to our every whim.
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