Today is Tuesday, and this afternoon a nice lady named Gail and her sharp-as-a-tack teenage daughter will make their way from their suburban south Erie County home to one of the poorest neighborhoods in inner-city Erie. Gail, her daughter and other volunteers maintain the clothes closet ministry at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church, in the heart of Erie’s Little Italy. Most of the clothes the ladies unpack, sort and arrange come from donations from the congregation at McLane Church where they hold a massive clothing drive twice per year. The folks at McLane have been blessed to be a small part of the Holy Trinity story.

You see this clothes closet is just one piece of the amazing effort put out by the parishioners of Holy Trinity to the west-side community where the church resides. Some years ago, facing a changing neighborhood, the folks at Holy Trinity decided to engage their neighbors showing Jesus’ love.  So on a typical Tuesday, not only do less-fortunate people get to choose from some nice clothes from the suburbs, but they can get a hot dinner, a bag full of groceries from the Holy Trinity food pantry, and the kids have after-school programming and homework help. There are other nights for more hot meals and care for the children. On Sundays the church worships, with a vibrancy that reflects the reality that their efforts and their hearts touch the heart of God.

There is something to be learned from the ministry of Holy Trinity Lutheran and the countless other faith-based efforts serving the poor.  Often when we donate clothes, drop dollars in a kettle, or put soup cans out for the letter carrier we feel good about doing a good thing, as we should. But the power comes when we figure out that God’s heart is with the poor, hopeless and hurting. As we “do unto others, as we do unto Him,” we encounter the true “downward-mobility” of the kingdom of God. We will discover that we, with much materially, are the needy ones, and we receive so much as we serve them.