By Mandy Cloninger
What a fitting way to start Serve More Sunday – with the hokey pokey!
On our bus we ended the morning's prayer with a short rendition of the hokey pokey because as Matt put it this morning, we've got to put our whole selves in when serving the Lord.
More than 400 volunteers from Hyde Park did just that on Serve More Sunday as we volunteered in service together at the holiday tent for Metropolitan Ministries.
The sea of red t-shirts was a powerful illustration of our church's mission in action, as we made God's love real by accepting donations, sorting food, stocking shelves, assisting clients with shopping, childcare, prayer and fellowship.
As you can see from the above photo of Thomas Porter, he hokey-pokied himself out stocking shelves. Those boxes of hope do get heavy when you're voluteering at Metropolitan Ministries!
“Love has to be put into action and that action is service,” Mother Theresa said, as seen on the wall in the holiday tent at Metropolitan Ministries.
Love was in action today as Hyde Park members smiled, laughed and sweated together. I was clearly amazed as one little girl helped me to sort all the canned vegetables into neat little rows of green peas, green beans, corn and miscellaneous vegetables, and when her mom came to take her for a snack, I begged, please, please bring her back to the shelves, she was awesome at stocking and sorting the vegetables!
Metropolitan Ministries is serving more homeless and at-risk families than ever before, and more than 2,000 of those are children. There are never quite enough cookies and sweets to last the day. We kept looking for sweets to add to the shelves, boxes of cake mix, icing, cookies and the like. As you can imagine, don't we all need a little something sweet?
As I departed Serve More Sunday, I observed a man sleeping underneath the overpass of I-275 with his Box of Hope, a Thanksgiving meal provided by Metropolitan Ministries beside him.
Break my heart, oh God, every day for the things that break yours.
More pictures from Serve More Sunday are available in the gallery!
Mandy:
Thanks for this article and photo! The Tribune also has posted a story with pictures. Here's a link:
http://www2.tbo.com/content/2010/nov/21/211534/hyde-park-church-sends-half-its-congregation-to-vo/news-breaking/
Posted by: Jim Lake | November 22, 2010 at 07:36 AM