Mark Beeson: Center for the Homeless "Miracle Luncheon 2014"

Grinding poverty is a terrible thing. Its consequences are brutal. It doesn't discriminate. It has no bias or prejudice. It spreads like a plague. It tortures. It kills.

I hate it and I hate what it does to people in its grasp.

Poverty is one of those things people discuss for a few minutes before throwing their hands in the air and saying, "Somebody should do something about that."

The wonderful people of Granger Community Church agree.

Somebody should do something about poverty... so we are, and we will, and we have since GCC began serving Christ in Michiana.

Maribeth Roncz invited Sheila & I to join John Meiser, Jeanna Tarwacki, Alison Silverraven, LeRoy King and Mark & Michelle Scott at a table she provided for the Center for the Homeless Holiday Miracle Luncheon yesterday. Maribeth is a whirlwind of exemplary service, who, with her husband Rick (a great leader of one of GCC's vital ministry teams and friend to me), attacks poverty whenever and wherever she can. Rick & Maribeth inspire me to keep working, no matter how discouraging and difficult someone's impoverished circumstances may be.

I'm guessing 700 community leaders attended the luncheon yesterday, all of them willing to do something to intercept the entropy of generational poverty in Michiana.

I greeted scores of friends and eventually bumped into Steve Camilleri... which is kind of like sticking your finger into an electric outlet; you simply can't walk away from that experience the same way you walked into it.

I talked with Steve for a while. He's the the Executive Director of the Center and a fantastic fellow. When I asked him about the students holding signs and lining the hallways, he told me about their Faces of Homelessness Project.

These are all John Adams High School JAG students. They're holding signs portraying the plight of homeless teens. Their signs didn't reflect their own circumstances; instead they pointed to the desperate circumstances of way too many American teens.