Sack Lunch

A peanut butter and jelly sandwich, cookie, apple, chips, juice box, and a chocolate candy. Sounds like what you would pack for a child's lunch. In fact, I'm sure my mom made me a lunch just like this many times as a child (except for the juice box--they weren't invented yet--so we had to settle for a small carton of white milk for $0.03 or $0.05 for chocolate milk. And where is the cent key on my keyboard!!!) Also, I don't think I had that many snacks. Come to think of it, I probably did--June Cleaver my mom was not!

Anyway, tonight seven of us from my small group got together and put together 30 of these sack lunches. At 10pm we got to Penn Station, split into two groups, and looked for people to pass them out to. At first it was a little hard. The station was pretty busy with plenty of people still traveling to LIRR (Long Island Rail Road)and NJ Transit, but as we walked on, we started to notice some homeless people beginning to gather. Per my Pastor's earlier visit there, the police allow the homeless to sleep in certain areas late at night when there are not many travelers.

This is another one of those things that is definitely out of my comfort zone. Never sure how to approach someone. I'd hate to insult someone by assuming they are homeless, when they're not. So I came up with a pretty good line that goes something like this, "Hi, how are you doing?" It works, too. The first guy I used it on said back to me "Do you have any food?" I also used this line, "Are you hungry? Would you like a lunch?" That worked too. I guess the thing to remember is to just be genuine. And keep it simple.

My biggest surprise, though, was how those we fed looked out for each other. They would tell us their friend would like a lunch too, and they would go get them and bring them to us. Or we would go to them. I hardly ever see that type of caretaking among those of us who are housed. I think that is what stuck out most in my mind.

We could have handed out 100 lunches, I'll bet, and still not been able to feed everyone. And this was just one place, on one day. I wonder how many people are going to bed hungry tonight?