Divine Intervention

The word had already spread through the bleak streets of Brownsville in Brooklyn, New York. Be ready — Pastor Billips is bringing food.

Pastor Willie Billips regularly picks up boxes filled with donated food from the Here’s Life Inner City warehouse. On this particular day, people are already in line waiting for him when he returns with his van filled to the brim.

Margie is there, with two young children. Her other kids are in foster care, maybe because they were born addicted. Margie has complicated family issues.

A week earlier, Margie’s electricity was cut off for non-payment. The food in her refrigerator spoiled. This morning she managed to get service reinstated, but she has no money to buy food for her kids. When she heard that Pastor Billips would have food available, she was overjoyed.

Willie prays with Margie and encourages her to come to services at the church, which she promises to do.

“Food,” Willie says, “opened the opportunity to share the Lord with her, to be a blessing. Food gets attention — and says that God cares about you.”

And it brings results! Quite a few folks are in his church today because they first received food … thanks to the Here’s Life Inner City warehouse!

Leave New York and head to the Midwest, and you’ll see other ways God is at work through the resources of Here’s Life Inner City.

“The Lift” in St. Paul, Minnesota, is a vibrant S.A.Y. Yes! program. [S.A.Y. Yes! is the biblically-based curriculum for at-risk children that Here’s Life has developed and made available to inner-city churches.]

There you’ll find a sixth-grader named Rikkia (the one on the right). Her mother has passed away, and she and her siblings live with an aunt and cousins.

When Rikkia arrived at S.A.Y. Yes! two years ago, she’d had little spiritual background. But after a year at the Center, learning and developing relationships, she headed to a Christian summer camp. There she opened her heart to the Lord!

She was part of the Here’s Life Purity Retreat last winter, and she attends church every week. She’s growing in Christ, absorbing truths from Scripture, learning how to communicate them with others, deepening in her understanding of grace.

And she’s doing great in school — writing for her school paper, even composing poetry. Her creations reflect what the Lord is doing in her life.

What’s happening in city after city, in life after life, is wonderful testimony to God’s great love for people in need.