Hope for the Destitute

We volunteered to serve at a fundraiser for the Cyrus Center. This is a home where street kids can go for a meal, a bed for the night and guidance in making decisions for their future.

The speaker for the evening was a representative from our local food bank. He gave some shocking and uncomfortable statistics about poverty in the world, kids trafficked into slavery and pandemic diseases. Diseases millions die from because they don’t have access to a simple vaccination! He mentioned a stat, I had also recently read about, that as little as two percent of the world’s grain would be enough to solve the problems of hunger. The point he focused on was that it’s not a problem with supply but, distribution.

We hear these things and wonder, “what can we really do about it? It’s obviously in the hands of bigger people.” But this evening was quite a timely setting for us. In the last short while I've noted how a fellow blogger auctioned off a necklace to raise money for an orphanage in Haiti. Other friends packed Samaritan’s Purse boxes for children living in poverty. Another friend's daughter recently left for Haiti to give practical aid. We also have a friend involved with well drilling crews in Africa. Many of you sponsor children. There really are a lot of opportunities.

At this fundraiser we saw how people are making a difference right where we live. It ended with an auction where the ticket auctioned off was a lunch with the mayor. The final offer by a local businessman was closed at three thousand dollars. And to make matters even better, the second highest offer and the final one volunteered to combine their dollars to both have lunch with the mayor. Fifty-five hundred dollars were donated to the shelter in a matter of minutes.

We went to bless, but we were blessed by the generosity that permeated the evening. All of this to say, no matter who we are, if we each give according to what we have, we can make a difference in someone's life.