PostScript:  Volunteer Essex was right.  Yesterday (6/27) people wanting the food were lined up 90 minutes ahead of time.  Many had brought along plastic wash tubs -- several pulled out wire framed grocery carts from their car trunks -- to get their Food Bank items.  Watching the activity from my second-floor window, I also noticed that about 75 percent of the people were obese.  Poor people may get enough food, but it's the type that leads to overweight, diabetes, heart problems, high blood pressure. 

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Looking  out my second-floor  window and  across W. Michigan Avenue this morning, I saw this gathering crowd in the Seventh-day Adventist Tabernacle parking lot.

As 10 a.m. approached , the crowd seemed to surge.  So I walked across the street.

Turns out the Tabernacle lot is one of 5 or 6 Food Bank distribution sites every Friday morning in summer months, scattered at locations across our little  city of Battle Creek, here in the American Midwest.

Tabernacle Volunteer Phyllis Essex predicted that future Fridays would see  more people, there to pick up perishable items, including fresh produce.

 "Oh, next Friday, people will be here waiting for us,  early in the morning," she predicted, "once folks know or remember about the sites and the food availability."

Caption: Three church volunteers help pass out perishable food in the Seventh-day Adventist parking lot this morning.  Back row, left to right, Phyllis Essex, William Minear, Rudy Hall.

People fill out a simple  form; list the number in their family.  No screening for income or need.  The presumption is those who show  have need for the food.

Why do Essex and the other Tabernacle volunteers spend  mornings handing out food to poor people, under the summer sun?

“Because if Jesus was on Earth today, he’d be right  here in the parking lot, handing out food with us,” Essex said.