Greer Soup Kitchen

A big thank you to members of the North Greenville University Trailblazers football team this morning for all the help today. Goooooooooooooooooooo Blazers.

Like many who woke up this morning I was shocked when I read that Senator Lindsey Graham passed away. I personally never was a fan but I have read some comments on WYFF news site and seen some of the sick comments that have been made and just shake my head at the vile that people can have. Make it clear on both sides of the political spectrum. People truly suck sometimes. He woke up Saturday morning as a sitting United States senator, twenty-three years into a Senate career that outlasted six presidential elections, three wars he voted on, and more news cycles than most people can name. By Saturday evening he was gone a “brief and sudden illness”, He was 71 years old. P**f.

Years ago a friend of mine Alan Callahan preached a wonderful sermon called “The Dash”. I’m sure it has been preached many times by many pastors but he wove Johnny Cash’s “Hurt” video into the sermon.

The song wasn’t his, Trent Reznor wrote it, about addiction and self-loathing but Johnny Cash, in his brilliance, seventy years old and visibly dying, took it and turned it into something closer to a will. To this day to me this video is almost unbearable to watch because it refuses to flatter him. It cuts between the young, Man In Black outlaw of the 1960s and the old man he’d become, hands shaking, voice cracked, surrounded by the physical wreckage of a museum full of his own former glory. Gold records gathering dust, a house he could no longer really live in. “What have I become,” he sings. He died six months after it aired. Nobody who has seen that video needed the book of Ecclesiastes explained to them afterward. Cash had already done the explaining, in four minutes, without a single sermon. Life in the dash.

Ecclesiastes is probably my favorite book in the Bible. I don’t know what that says about me but in the book King Solomon’s was willing to admit, at the height of his power, that power hadn’t answered the only question that really matters. Every sudden death is a message meant for the people who are still standing and gives us opportunities to work on our Dash.

Johnny Cash didn’t get to choose when the cameras stopped rolling. Graham didn’t get to choose Saturday morning nor did King Solomon and neither will we. The only thing any of us actually control is what we do with the part in between the two dates and whether we wait for a museum full of dusty gold records, or a sudden headline on a Saturday from a United States Senator.

None of it matters. It will rot away. What doesn’t rot, in Solomon’s own accounting, is did you eat your bread with someone you loved, did you do the next right thing with your hand when it was in front of you. That part doesn’t come with a title attached, senator or otherwise.

Johnny Cash - Hurt REMASTERED IN HD! UP TO 4K!Official Music Video for Hurt performe...

We were running low on H2O this morning when I came in. Put out a call and our need was met. Hotter than blazes out there. Thanks to the Greer community. Amazed daily by the generosity of the Greer community.

Happy Independence Day!!!!

I cannot get enough of the videos of those visitors coming over for the World Cup. They came to cheer for their teams, wave their flags, sing their songs and experience one of the greatest sporting events on earth. They are discovering something else. They are discovering America.

Not the America they have been told about. Not the America portrayed in the bleakest headlines, the angriest social media posts or the endless commentary insisting that this country is hopelessly divided, dangerous, intolerant and in decline.

They are meeting the real America.

They are sitting next to strangers at soccer matches and leaving as friends. They are walking into barbecue joints, diners, food trucks and neighborhood restaurants and discovering that American food is a lot more than the stereotypes they brought with them. They are discovering barbecue in one city, tacos in another, seafood on the coast, soul food in the South and immigrant traditions from nearly every corner of the globe.

And they are meeting Americans.
Ordinary Americans who give directions, recommend restaurants, talk soccer with complete strangers and sometimes cheer alongside visitors whose countries are playing against our own.
That experience matters because there has been a growing disconnect between the America people hear about and the America they actually encounter.

We flip the TV screen on and watch parts of our own media and you could be forgiven for wondering why anyone would ever want to come here. America is too often described as a collection of failures: our divisions, our mistakes, our inequalities and our political arguments. Please tell me what country on the face of the big ole earth has zero problems. Im waiting….show me. Our problems are real. America has never been perfect, and patriotism should never require pretending otherwise.

But there is an enormous difference between saying America has problems and saying America is the problem. A nation can acknowledge its failures while still celebrating its achievements. It can argue fiercely about its future while remaining grateful for its past. It can recognize injustice while also recognizing that millions of people around the world still see something here worth reaching for.

And perhaps that is the simplest test of all is just to look at the direction of the line.

For generations, people have risked everything to get into America. They have crossed oceans, waited years, filled out mountains of paperwork and left behind everything familiar for a chance to build a life here.

The line to America overwhelmingly goes one way: in.

That does not mean every American policy is correct. It does not mean every institution works as it should. It does not mean every citizen has received an equal shot or that our work is finished. It means that despite our flaws, the promise remains.

Freedom remains attractive.
Opportunity remains attractive.
The ability to speak your mind, build a business, worship as you choose, criticize your government, change your circumstances and dream bigger for your children remains attractive.

The World Cup is giving millions of visitors a chance to see that America for themselves. They may arrive expecting only soccer. They may leave talking about the stadiums, the cities, the enormous portions, the barbecue they are already trying to recreate at home and the Ranch dressing. Most of all they talk about the Americans who welcomed them.

And maybe we Americans should pay attention to what they see. Sometimes a visitor can remind you of what you have stopped noticing.

America is loud. America is argumentative. America is messy, complicated and unfinished. We fight with one another because we are free to fight with one another. We criticize our country leaders because we are free to criticize it.

On this 250th Independence Day, we should remember that gratitude and criticism are not opposites.

We can work to make America better because America is worth making better.

We can confront our problems without teaching ourselves to hate our country.
And as visitors from around the world discover America beyond the headlines, perhaps we should rediscover it too.

Not a perfect country.

Not a finished country.

But a great country.

And still, after 250 years, a country that people around the world are lining up to enter.

Happy 250, America. The greatness country on God’s earth.

Had a wonderful group with us today serving at the soup kitchen. A group from the South Carolina Chapter of NIDO. Everyone was treated to some Nigerian cuisine. It was outstanding. Cannot thank you enough.

RFK Jr said that homelessness is "one of the greatest problems that we have now, health problems in this country" and that it is interconnected with the crisis of drug addiction, which has caused more than 1 million deaths since 2000.

Kennedy said administration officials do not support so-called harm reduction initiatives, such as needle exchanges or "safe injection sites." Instead, the administration is emphasizing treatment.

Thanks for addressing this problem. Baby steps.

RFK Jr. Announces More Than $700 Million To Target Mental Illness, Homelessness The money will go to various programs, including a su***de hotline.

We are needing a group for Sunday June 14. Anyone interested send message me and I will hook you up. Thanks in advance.