Birthday Club
My birthday was on Wednesday. I had so many people texting, calling, and sending Facebook greetings that I eventually put my phone away on silent because I was constantly being interrupted from my work. Don't get me wrong, I love and appreciate all the attention I can get on my birthday--I just didn't have the bandwidth to respond to each one. Bottom line -- I felt incredibly loved and known.
Contrast that with Alice*. Alice has been living on the streets of Bellflower for a couple of years. I see Alice almost every day as I walk to the office. We usually chit chat, sometimes even getting into deeper issues of how her and her daughter ended up homeless. But I realized something. Even though I see her every day, I have no clue when her birthday is. More than likely, it passed without anyone making her a cake or even taking her out for a warm meal. Who is celebrating Alice?
Over the last couple of months, the team at Kingdom Causes has been struggling to find more tangible intersections between the church and our disenfranchised neighbors, like Alice. We have Saturday morning breakfast and showers, and various other food ministries among the local churches where volunteers can serve and become familiar with the faces of such neighbors. But where are the opportunities for relationship building... like really really getting to know each other's stories?
I think we need to learn the birthdays and celebrate some of the faces we see wandering the streets at night without a home. What if a women's small group celebrated Alice on her birthday with a meal, birthday cards and a cake? What if that same group also knew Alice's prayer requests during the month and checked in with her when they saw her walking around the city?
We are in the business of transforming lives. We see the most success when people of faith are walking alongside our neighbors. Will you take a small step towards that by joining our Birthday Club?