Last week I posted on Facebook asking y’all to bring coats for adults in need and to donate money so that we can buy new, modest coats for kids in need. A mother from OKC saw the post and drove down with her 6 kids. Her husband died a few years ago and she was struggling to get by. She’d depended on charity from lots of organizations to get by, but until she saw my post, she’d sworn to never again go to another church for help. 

She told me a story about getting coats from a church once only to find mites and bed bugs in two of the coats her kids. Another time, the church wouldn’t help her family until they came to a worship service, so she agreed. Don’t dress too nice, the minister said. So her family went to the service and the minister stood the whole family up on stage so that the church could ogle their charity case and pate themselves on the back for being such good Christians. This mother said she watched her children choke back tears on that stage, and she swore never again would she go to another church for help. The cost was too high. 

But when she saw that we give new coats to kids, she thought she’d give it one more try. So she drove down with her kids, and we went shopping. We picked out nice, new coats for all of her kids and even her, and when they left, she cried. And I cried. 

Justice rolled out of our eyes and righteousness flowed down our cheeks. 

Each coat we put on cold shoulders, each diaper we put on Afghan refugee bottoms, each clean sock on a tired foot, each tear shed in solidarity with the hurting- all drops of water falling in a dessert land. 

Excerpt from the sermon AMOS: Justice Rolls Down preached by Jakob Topper on 11/14/2021 and shared anonymously with consent.