One of the projects at several of the churches in the Ipswich Circuit have embraced over the last couple of years has been the introduction of free little pantries and at the time of writing six of our churches are successfully running pantries. There is a notice inside which invites people to take what they need, and give what they can, the idea being to provide people with enough produce to make a meal if they have run out of food. If they need more longer-term help, we will refer people in need to one of the local foodbanks.
During the last year my daughter and I have gone to one of our local churches early on a Tuesday morning and topped up the pantry, we normally put about a dozen items in each day to cover breakfast, lunch or dinner and an item of toiletries. I have said on several occasions that the shed itself is worth more than the contents.
A strange thing has happened recently, we went through all the autumn and winter months with around half the contents being taken at a time, then during the last few weeks the panty has been virtually empty every morning and I find myself wondering why. The natural assumption of most people will be that somebody is taking advantage of our kindness, and instead of wandering down the road for fifteen minutes to where there are two supermarkets, one person is helping themselves to the free food in our pantry and we have been too naïve to imagine that this might even be a possibility. There are those who will happily remind us that we should have seen this coming.
Of course there could be other possibilities, the panty is passed every day by the parents of the children who attend the local school, many of whom live in some of the poorer areas of the town. If just one percent of the parents take a couple of items each, the result would be exactly the same, an empty pantry. My original assumption was that people would have found life much tougher during the winter months, so why was this happening now as the weather was getting warmer and hopefully energy bills would reduce. Children are expensive, new shoes, new school uniforms and at this time of the year parents will be thinking about the long school holidays, so maybe there is a reasonable explanation that is less cynical.
The most important lesson in all of this is that there is a temptation for us to assume the worst and withdraw the service in indignation, but I think that this would be the wrong thing to do. I was looking recently at the story of Jesus feeding the five thousand and I find myself asking what he would want is to do. I feel certain that he would advise that we keep up the good work whatever the explanation.