It was a night of 100 little miracles...

 

It actually started the day before, when I picked up the phone (my secretary usually screens for me, don’t judge) and a company I had never talked to needed to donate cookies, probably because a retail store had refused delivery. Someone told them we might be the right people to ask. I asked how many they had, they said around 16 pallets. I figured with our Thanksgiving pantry the next day, we could move four. But then the still small voice said get more. I said, “Sure, if I call back and the number they give me is 10, then that’s my sign”. They said they could give me 6 more. That was our first little miracle, everyone at our pantry was going to get an extra treat for Thanksgiving.

When I went to the office at 6:30am that morning, there was already a car claiming the first spot. It was going to be a big day.

The day itself didn’t start out well – we were expecting 3 trucks by 10am so that we could start by 11. The first one arrived at 9, it was just the 500 turkey boxes we had ordered. We found out the cookies wouldn’t arrive until 12 or 1, but that was ok, because we could start without them. But the truck carrying the bulk of our food, 1152 food boxes, got two flat tires. It couldn’t be helped, and he wouldn’t end up arriving until almost 1pm, and we wouldn’t be able to start until 2, almost 3 hours behind schedule, with hundreds of people already in line, and dozens of volunteers with nothing to do. And not only that, I had gotten distracted and not kept up with traffic, which was now a dozen blocks long and snaking in all the wrong directions through the neighborhood. People didn’t like being told to move around, as they were all jostling for the same spot, and they all asked the same question. “Will I get a turkey?”

I love directing traffic and walking down the line of cars. People want you to stop and pray for them. They want to tell you thank you. They want to update you on how God answered the prayer you prayed for them the week before. But today, they really just wanted to know about the bird. “Will I get a turkey?” “Do you have enough?” The further back in line I walked, the more tepid my response became. It went from “Of course”, to “I’m pretty sure” to “I think so” and then finally to “We’ll see”. It wasn’t fun knowing that people who waited 3 to 4 hours might just go home with the basic food box, but we could only buy so many turkeys. That’s just how it was.

But once it started, it started. The line became a fury of popping trunks, loading boxes and reloading tables. Diapers were flying out to the loaders. The registration person was taking names as fast as her hands could write. There were so many children whose faces lit up when they heard there were cookies. And a few older people too, everyone loves cookies. The kids are always the ones that get you. One week earlier I found one of our workers crying after a five-year-old boy told them, “Thank you, we didn’t have any food.” You would have 49 grateful people and 1 difficult one, and we’d try to love them as much as the other 49. But you get so busy that you don’t hear every “thank you”, or every story that each guest wants to tell you. You’re just trying to get everyone fed and hoping the food doesn’t run out.

"Loaves and Fishes" 

We always say that around the pantry. We know that many pantries ran out of food before the need was met. Others required a sign up because they knew they didn’t have the resources. I always tell my wife, “There’s only so much we can do”, and she ignores me. We knew with COVID and all the job losses in our area it was going to be a big day. We had topped 400 and 500 guests the weeks leading up to this. And we had ordered 500 turkeys. It cost us more than we had. We raised funds from every source we could find and it still didn’t cover the costs. And with only 500 turkeys, some people were going to have to go without. Except that it’s always loaves and fishes around here. And it seemed that for every turkey we gave out another would appear. I kept thinking we’d run out, and there was just more and more and even too much. It was late in the night that we realized that either through an error on our part or on the part of our distributor, every box that we thought had one 13lb turkey had two. And instead of giving out 500, we were well on our way to giving out almost 1000. God answered the prayer of every guest in line who asked me, “Will I get a turkey”, and to each I had said with more hope than reality, “I think so”. I felt awful knowing that we didn’t hold back any turkeys for our own people, not even our own volunteers. Yet by the end of the night, we were still taking a dozen turkeys back to our freezer, our “twelve baskets” at the end of the feast. Every one of the almost 1000 people that came got a turkey, and we were still putting some away for our next pantry.

There was a lady whose name I don’t remember, and if she was standing in front of me today I might not recognize, but I remember the anxiety in her voice. I was walking the line, directing traffic, checking on our guests. Our wait was agonizingly long, but there was little we could do. I remember her talking about how she was going to have to go to work, that she couldn’t wait. But I hear that a lot. I’m sure every charity does. Everyone has a mother’s sister who’s brother’s cousins friend has a special reason why they should be at the front of the line. Honestly, you learn to tune it out. But her voice had something different, it had anxiety. But the rules of our pantry require us to treat everyone equally. We didn’t hold turkey’s aside for our own volunteers, and my hands were pretty much tied, she would have to wait or do without. But I couldn’t shake the sound of the anxiety in her voice.

Because of our 3-hour late start, it was well past dark, and we were still giving out food.  We kept saying we’d shut it down after this car. Then this car. Then this car. Then her car pulled up. She told my wife she couldn’t believe we were still open; she was sure the parking lot would be empty. She had to leave earlier because she had to go to work. She had nothing for her family for Thanksgiving and she was desperate. And a “little voice” told her to try anyway, to stop in and see if we were still open. And there we were, probably rather ragged looking, but still there, waiting for her. Even if we didn’t know she was the one we had been waiting for.

As a pastor I’m always telling the church “My sheep know my voice”, and if you belong to God, you know when He speaks to your heart. This lady did not appear to be “church people”. Something tells me she had no idea it was the Holy Spirit speaking to her. But I recognize it, that moment when God begins to change your life. Change your heart. Change your destiny. It always starts with that “little voice”. That the almighty God of the universe chooses to reveal Himself this way is one of the great mysteries of the divine humility. And whether or not she fully knows it, she is one of His children, and now, because of our ragged little church, she has heard His voice.

I ended the night more tired than I’d ever felt working at the church. My blisters had blisters and those blisters were still serving people food. My wife and I stared at a remote we were both to tired to reach for to see if we made the news. But everyone that worked that day knew the same thing: Today was a special day. A blessed day. A good day.

If the cookies didn’t come, it would have been different. If the delivery hadn’t set us back three hours, it would have been different. If the lines had been shorter, it would have been different. If the weather hadn’t been unseasonably warm, it would have been different. But it was what it was, and it was good.

It was a night of a hundred little miracles.