I started working at a soup kitchen in Greer SC way back in 1990. I have seen many people walk through the doors both as volunteers and those we call “clients”. I have many stories I could tell. Many things I have seen.

I grew up in a blue collar family. I never really thought about the poor and if I did or saw someone who was homeless they were just lazy and didn’t deserve any of my hard-earned money. So, I had an assumption that if you did not have a job, it was because you were lazy and if you were collecting unemployment or a related service, you were essentially a leech on the system. That is who the poor were. Unfortunately that is the way some people still think.

Years ago I had an awakening and my whole attitude about the poor and homelessness was shattered and my life’s direction took on a different path. The poor actually had a human face. I have seen the faces of children on Christmas Day and instead of kids being home opening presents on Christmas morning they are with parents sitting outside a soup kitchen in 20 degree weather waiting on me to open the doors to warm up and eat a meal. They had a face.

I have seen black faces, white faces, brown faces. I have seen faces that are wrinkled , faces on drugs, faces of working girls, faces of baby boys and girls. FACES.

Over the years I have I got to know a lot of these individuals. Some of what they were going through was mental illness, plus abuse, plus addiction. Inevitably their choices were their own at some point and yes, there were dishonest people who just wanted to use the system. I have learned that even their stories were not as straightforward as I assumed. Everyone had a story.

One such face is a man who we call Red. I could not tell you Red’s real name. I have no idea. I have known Red for 10 years. To be quite honest when I met Red he was a royal pain in the ass. You never knew which Red you would get. The off the wall, mental non medicated Red or the medicinally medicated Red who was a pleasure to be around. Most of the time it was the mental Red. The Red who would wash my truck in a thunderstorm, Red. Over the years I have witnessed changes in Red. Changes for the better.

I consider myself a person of faith. I do believe in God and happen to believe in the Christian version. I have never audibly heard the voice of the Almighty but in my years of working at the soup kitchen I truly have seen what I believe is Christ in action. So much so I went from an agnostic who was up in the air about faith of any kind to a person who has no doubt of God’s existence.

The latest example was this past Friday when Red came up to me and out of nowhere asked me and a friend of mine Warren to pray for him. I was taken back because it was so unlike Red. We recruited another friend Dean to go with us. Red was having problems with people who were speaking badly about the soup kitchen and he didn’t appreciate it and was going to lay his hands on them, Red style. Honestly don’t think that he would have but the fact that he wanted us to pray instead of handing it himself was quite the miracle. Reading this you may think that this was no big deal but this in fact is a big deal. Like Moses parting the Red Sea big deal. In Red’s world The Greer Soup Kitchen is his life. I believe Red would probably be dead if it weren’t for the people who have shown him the unconditional love that Christ teaches us to do.

If you would like to get involved, help change this part of our world and make a difference and touch lives and have your life touched as well. You can make a difference. Red is proof of that.

 Proverbs 22:9 — “A generous man will himself be blessed, for he shares his food with the poor”.