The Food Pantry

I run a small food pantry out of our church in Louisville. There have been many Fridays when we were nearly out of food with families still waiting. I used to panic. Now I pray and wait. The number of times that a donation — unsolicited, unannounced — has arrived on exactly those Fridays is no longer something I can dismiss as coincidence. Last month: twelve families in line, enough food for eight, and I was silently asking for help. A pickup truck pulled into the lot with four hundred pounds of canned goods. The driver said his company had surplus and he had felt, that morning, that he should bring it here. I stopped being surprised. I have not stopped being grateful.