When the Food Pantry Wasn't Enough

Dorothy Chen had volunteered at Grace Community's food pantry every Tuesday for eleven years. She knew the regulars by name — knew that Miguel's daughter had asthma, that Keisha was studying for her GED, that Mr. Patterson preferred canned pears over peaches.

But one Tuesday, Dorothy noticed something that stopped her mid-shelf. Three of the families in line worked at the poultry processing plant owned by a deacon in her own congregation. They earned $9.50 an hour with no benefits, and every week they stood in the church basement receiving donated cans of the very chicken they had processed.

Dorothy brought it up at the next elder meeting. The room went quiet. "We're already doing so much," someone said. "We give more to missions than any church in the county."

But Dorothy couldn't unsee it. She kept hearing the prophet's words — that the fast the Almighty chooses isn't about bowed heads and sackcloth. It's about loosing the chains of injustice. It's about the wages sitting in the pockets of the powerful while the workers line up for charity.

Grace Community eventually partnered with a workers' advocacy group. It was harder than filling shelves. It cost them a major donor. But something shifted — their light, as Isaiah promised, began to break forth like the dawn. Not because they added another program, but because they finally asked who was holding the chains.