The Soup Kitchen on Park Avenue

In 2019, a Manhattan restaurant called Rethink Food began collecting surplus meals from high-end kitchens along Park Avenue and delivering them to homeless shelters across the Bronx. Volunteers noticed something unexpected. The people receiving those meals — many sleeping in shelters, some battling addiction — would share their portions with newcomers who looked more frightened than hungry. They'd pull up chairs, make introductions, offer the kind of welcome you rarely find at a five-star table.

Meanwhile, some of the donors from those upscale restaurants admitted they ate alone most nights, scrolling through phones in empty apartments that cost more per month than some families earn in a year.

Jesus stood on a level place and looked at the crowd — the sick, the broke, the desperate — and called them blessed. Then He turned to the comfortable and said, "Woe to you who are rich, for you have already received your comfort." He wasn't romanticizing poverty or demonizing wealth. He was naming a truth we keep trying to unsee: fullness can become its own kind of emptiness, and those who know what it means to go without often understand what it means to give.

The kingdom of God has always worked like this — the last table becomes the first, and those with nothing to offer except themselves discover they have everything that matters.