Monday, March 26, 2007

Turn the Other Cheek

When I went to church yesterday I brought a large box of food and personal toiletries to donate for our Food Shelf program. The month of March serves as the campaign focus for the Minnesota FoodShare program which acquires food to donate to the state's 265 food shelves (www.gmcc.org/foodshare).

I had been planning to make this donation for the last few weeks so it was on my mind when I read Sunday's newspaper column by Doug Grow (www.startribune.com) entitled, "Enriching the city by feeding needy folks for 40 years." This article was a profile on Hy Rosen, age 82, of Minneapolis who has run a food shelf for the last 40 years.

The most inspiring aspect of this article was the fact that Mr. Rosen's grocery store on Plymouth Avenue in Minneapolis was destroyed by the race riots that swept across the USA in the 1960's. Instead of being angry at the looters who destroyed his store Mr. Rosen clearly showed more Christian love than I fear I don't have by "turning the other cheek" by going to work running a food bank in Pilot City.

Turning to the business side of Grow's column I would note Mr. Rosen's current project to bring overstocks of produce which regularly end up in Arizona landfills to Minnesota for use in our food banks. All Mr. Rosen needs is a transportation system to get the food to him. The cheap German farmer heritage in my DNA loves this plan!!!

Thank you for your good deeds Mr. Rosen.

Todd

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