Our small church in the city meets on the fourth Sunday of the month for service. Not a service but service. There is no worship service but we are given service projects in the community. Last night after dinner together, we split up to clean a seven block stretch of Main Street, both sides and the median. Our group of six or seven filled up three large garbage bags in an hour. Other people stayed in the church building and wrote letters of encouragement and support. A third group helped organize the room where the children meet on Sundays. Since we are sharing space with another church this project helped them out, too. Pastor Susan took the children to the local firehouse and distributed bags of cookies and the kids got to meet the firefighters and get on a fire truck.
I was out on garbage patrol while my wife stayed in and wrote out cards. It had been hot during the day but by 6 pm it was only muggy due to a passing thunderstorm. No matter we worked up a good sweat. The street was busy with cars and people stopping at several fast food businesses. I noted that a good share of the trash we were picking up was packaging from those same restaurants. There were several tattered Charlie Crist for Governor signs from a recent political rally, or Scott supporters were messing with Crist's signs. In this part of the city where many signs read, African-Americans for Crist, I figured it was the former.
One local catering business owner was on his way out to his van and turned to thank us for what we were doing. Mostly though the persons on the street went about their own business without giving us a second look. Next week, someone commented, the street would look much the same as it had before we started. That might be true but for right now the street looked good and we had had a good church service.
