The Fast That Fed Tenth Street

Every January, the congregation at Redeemer Fellowship in southeast Portland held a twenty-one-day fast. They printed devotional booklets, organized prayer chains, posted their progress on social media. But one January, elder Rosa Gutierrez drove a different route to church and passed the tent encampment along Tenth Street — thirty or forty shelters made from tarps and shopping carts, three blocks from their sanctuary.

She brought it up at the next elders' meeting. "We're fasting from food," she said, "while people three blocks away don't have any."

That week, the church reimagined the fast. Instead of skipping meals, each family cooked an extra one. They collected sleeping bags, socks, hand warmers. A retired contractor organized teams to reinforce the tents with better tarps and insulation. The youth group launched a Saturday breakfast under the Powell Street overpass.

Isaiah 58 names it "the fast I have chosen" — to loose the chains of injustice, to share your bread with the hungry, to provide the wanderer with shelter. The Almighty was never impressed by empty stomachs and bowed heads. He wanted open hands and open doors.

By spring, three families from the encampment had moved into transitional housing — connected through relationships that started over scrambled eggs on a cold Saturday morning. Redeemer's people discovered what the prophet promised: when you spend yourselves on behalf of the hungry, your light rises in the darkness.