This is a story of a very well meaning Christian womens group that I was a part of many years ago. At the time I was myself a single mom raising two children and while the church was a big part of my life, I may have been extra sensitive in this case. You decide.

Our church group had taken on the responsibility of adopting, figuratively, a family of four who at the time lived in area where our sanctuary was located. When I joined the group they had been sponsoring this family for several years. The husband/father was in prison and we helped by remembering the children at Christmas and birthdays with cards and gifts. At other times we would regularly bring food items to our monthly meetings and someone would volunteer to drop them off and say hi to the family. While I was part of the group the family hit a snag and their rent was raised beyond their ability to cover it and they had several months to find another home. During this time, and it could also have been during a time we were on a summer break from meetings, but somehow they were unable to find a place nearby and had to move across town to a much less desirable neighborhood where working two jobs, Betty could afford the rent.

The next time we met and brought food to drop by there was a lack of enthusiasm about anyone driving to the area where they now lived. That hit me in a very visceral way, but I merely offered to drop off the food and later met Betty and her kids for an outing with my boys at the Zoo. During both those events I was able to see her new home and also spend time with her and her children. I took some pictures of them when we were at the zoo. On our way to the next monthly meeting, I stopped at Walmart and picked up the pictures from the roll of film I had dropped off earlier that week. I tucked the envelope in my purse and didn’t open it until later in the meeting. Someone brought up the idea that since the family had moved out of town, we should really break ties and find a new, closer family to support.

I had a lot to say about that. I proceeded to say that now more than ever the continuity of our care mattered to that family. She was now holding down two lousy part time jobs to make ends meet. Her kids came home to an empty house in a cramped, rundown area of town. While not necessarily unsafe, it had none of the trappings of the more expensive area from which they had moved. The schools were no longer A rated either. Those were ways in which they had majorly been affected. However when speaking to the twenty-one women gathered that day for our church ladies group, I made the point that besides those things, it never occurred to me that Jesus was concerned with zip codes, when deciding who deserved his time or care. When I was done with an admonishment that we had in no way offered to help them find a new place nearby so they could have stayed in the same schools as well as continued to enjoy the safety of the area where we lived. I thought we should reconsider ‘getting a new family’, and at that time I opened my photos from Walmart. I was going to pass them around for all to see, but I noticed instead of one of each that I had taken, there were instead 21 copies of the last one I took, one of Betty and her children leaning against their car. I have no idea why there were as many copies as there were women present, and I offered that now they could each have a picture to put on their refrigerator as they prayed about what we should do concerning this family. Needless to say, they did not vote to abandon this family, at least not while I was still a member of their group.