Cooking Club Garage Sale

If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person? Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.

—1 John 3:17–18

On a clear, cool Saturday morning, the Cooking Club girls arrived at Casey’s house. We clutched our coffees, murmured hello, and began sliding folding tables out of the garage. The last several times the Cooking Club has gathered, we’ve talked about hunger. We’re food people, obviously. We’re moms and aunts and sisters. We care about hunger, and we wanted to find a tactile, practical way to make a difference in our town.

That’s how we arrived at the Cooking Club garage sale and bake sale, with all the proceeds benefiting the Care Center, where our church helps feed needy families in our city. We sold clothes, shoes, toys, books, tables, chairs, lamps, and all manner of kitchen gear. At the end of the day we sat around Casey’s kitchen with margaritas, dusty and tired, while she counted out every last quarter. We made over a thousand dollars for the Care Center, which feels like an insane amount when you make it mostly in two-dollar increments. A thousand dollars in the face of a problem like hunger in a city the size of Chicago isn’t that much. But it’s something. We did something.