The Breakfast Before the Service

Every Sunday morning, First Avenue Community Church spent four hundred dollars on fresh flowers for the sanctuary. The arrangements were stunning — birds of paradise, white lilies, cascading greenery flanking the communion table. Meanwhile, a block and a half away, residents of the Garfield Heights apartments were skipping meals to cover rent.

It was a deacon named Marcus who finally said it out loud during a board meeting: "We're decorating a table where we talk about the Bread of Life while our neighbors' kids go to school hungry."

The silence lasted a full thirty seconds.

Within a month, the flower budget became a breakfast program. Every Saturday, volunteers set up folding tables in the Garfield Heights courtyard — scrambled eggs, toast, orange juice, and coffee. No sermon. No sign-up sheet. Just food and conversation.

What surprised Marcus most wasn't the turnout. It was what happened inside the church. Giving actually increased. People who had sleepwalked through Sunday worship for years started showing up on Saturdays with spatulas and cartons of eggs, and they came to Sunday services awake, alive, changed.

Isaiah's promise proved true in the most literal way: "Then your light will break forth like the dawn, and your healing will quickly appear." The congregation discovered that the fast the Almighty honors isn't the one that empties your stomach — it's the one that opens your hands.