The Lunch Line at Riverside Elementary

When the federal free lunch program was cut at Riverside Elementary in rural Tennessee in 2024, principal Maria Gonzalez watched 140 children lose their only guaranteed meal of the day. She called the school board. She called the state representative's office. She called the county commissioner. Each voice on the other end offered sympathy and nothing else. The princes had no help to give.

Then something quiet began to happen. A retired farmer named Earl Dawson showed up Monday morning with forty pounds of pulled pork and a slow cooker the size of a bathtub. By Wednesday, three churches had organized a rotating meal schedule. A widow on a fixed income — Dorothy Beale, eighty-one years old — started baking cornbread every single school day, enough for every child who needed it. She told a reporter, "The Lord fed me when I had nothing. I'm just passing the plate."

No politician rescued those kids. No government program swooped in. The Almighty moved through cracked hands and church kitchens and a widow's oven.

Psalm 146 tells us not to put our trust in princes, in human beings who cannot save. Instead, blessed are those whose hope is in the Lord — the God who executes justice for the oppressed, who gives food to the hungry, who upholds the widow and the fatherless. He reigns forever, and His faithfulness never runs out of cornbread.