The owner of a Chick-Fil-A franchise in Birmingham, Alabama is gaining national attention after a customer secretly videotaped him showing Christ’s love to a homeless man.
The unidentified man walked into the store last week and asked owner Mark Meadows if he could work for some food.
“We made eye contact and I asked him what would he like, what we could do for him and then he asked if he could do some work to get something to eat,” Meadows told ABC News.
Meadows responded by having the man sit down and they gave him a meal on the house. As the man was waiting for his meal, Meadows noticed he was rubbing his hands together and asked if the man had gloves.
When he said no, Meadows went into his office and brought out his gloves and gave them to the man.
Meadows was not intending to tell anyone about the incident but a customer recorded the encounter and posted it on social media.
“[My son] Bryson and I are sitting in Chick Fil A on 280. A man walked in to get warm with all of his earthly possessions on his back,” patron Andrea Stoker wrote in a status that has now gone viral. “The manager, who is on his break, got up and asked the man if he could get him anything. Before the man could even answer, the manager asked if the man had any gloves and handed him his, then got him the meal of his choice.”
“There is still so much good in this world and I’m so grateful that Bryson saw it all unfold,” she continued.
A new study from the National Center on Family Homelessness says that 2.5 million American children are now homeless.
The number is the highest level recorded to date.
The report was based on data from the U.S. Department of Education and the Census Bureau. In addition to the number of homeless children, the report outlined hundreds of thousands of children who were in danger of losing their housing or living in unsafe, unsanitary conditions.
Single women were the highest for homelessness with children. Single black and Hispanic women were more likely to be in poverty and on the verge of homelessness than any other demographic.
The study said that African American families experience homelessness at a greater rate than any other demographic.
The worst states for homelessness was Alabama and Mississippi.
A magnitude 6.7 earthquake rattled Japan late Saturday night leaving crumpled homes and dozens injured.
Aftershocks continued to shake the area and villagers fled their homes to shelters after at least 50 homes collapsed after the initial quake. Officials say that because the homes are built to withstand feet of heavy snow in the winter, it kept more homes from collapsing.
However, the homes that fell resulted in broken bones after heavy furniture fell on residents as they slept on their tatami floors.
The quake, which struck just west of Nagano at a depth of 3 miles, struck along a very active fault according to the Japan Meteorological Agency.
Officials say most of the residents of the area are elderly and that younger residents are working to care for those who were injured and who lost their homes.
She may be beaten and bruised but a Florida woman is refusing to let a violent encounter with a homeless man stop her from doing the Lord’s work.
Tara Barnes, 69, was kidnapped by a homeless man who climbed into the backseat of her car and put a knife to her throat. He ordered Barnes to drive to the Ocala National Forest. However, before they reached that destination, the man ordered her to pull over, threw a rope around her neck, dragged her from the car and beat her with a club.
The man kept yelling, “you rich [word deleted] think we need your help?” as he beat the elderly woman.
He then stuck Barnes back in the car and took her to a K-Mart parking lot where he then beat her unconscious.
Barnes was hospitalized for over a day with various injuries. The man who kidnapped the woman is still at large.
“This is God’s work,” Barnes told the New York Daily News about feeding the homeless. “We’re not going to let this one nut stop us.”
She was back the following week cooking meals for the homeless.
Outspoken Christian NBA player Jeremy Lin celebrated his joining the L.A. Lakers in a way that seems unusual in the world of high-dollar sports.
He fed the homeless.
“Famed shooter Jeremy Lin who was recently acquired by the L.A. Lakers, embraced his new city by serving meals to the homeless today along with teammates Xavier Henry and Laker Girls at The Midnight Mission SoCal’s largest social service provider,” the Midnight Mission shared online.
Lin has previously conducted multiple outreaches in cities where he plays as part of the Jeremy Lin Foundation. The foundation says their work is “compelled by [Lin’s] relationship with Jesus.”
Lin’s official first interview with the Lakers, posted to the team’s website, had Lin saying that he was going to be playing for God and would let the Lord decide the results and how it will benefit his team and his community.
“When I look back on the past two years, I think I’ve grown and learned a lot as a person, as a Christian and also as a basketball player,” Lin said.
The Los Angeles Dream Center is mobilizing opposition to a potential ban on feeding Los Angeles’ homeless residents.
L.A. City Councilman Tom LaBonge introduced a motion that would prohibit all organizations, including religious ones, from providing outdoor food services to the needy. LaBonge said such activities “get in the public’s right of way” and they can have “negative impacts to the surrounding community.”
The Dream Center and supporters have started a petition drive to show that the public does not support the restrictions on feeding those in need.
“If feeding were to be banned or restricted, it would cut off our lifeline to not only feed the homeless but families,” Pastor Matthew Barnett told The Christian Post. “Tens of thousands of people would be impacted. Mobile trucks are the only way to reach people. We’ve been doing this for nearly twenty years. Mobile outreach meets people in their world and that’s where the impacts are made.”
The National Coalition for the Homeless, based in Washington, D.C., said they will be mobilizing to help the L.A. effort.
“It’s mean-spirited to deny hungry people food and wrong for the city council to ban charitable acts,” Jerry Jones of Coalition said. “If volunteers want to feed homeless people, the city shouldn’t be throwing up roadblocks, they should be thanking them.”
Birmingham police have stopped two Christian organizations from feeding the homeless in the city.
The police and city officials say that because of a new ordinance passed at the behest of restaurant owners to stop food trucks in the city the ministries can no longer take their trucks to hand out free hot dogs and water to those in need.
“I’m just so totally shocked that the city is turning their back on the homeless like this,” Pastor Rick Wood told WBMA-TV. “It’s like they want to chase them out of the city. And the homeless can’t help the position they’re in. They need help.”
The Lord’s House of Prayer has been feeding the poor and homeless in Birmingham every Saturday for the last six years before the police stopped them from feeding the hungry.
Birmingham’s mayor is all in favor of keeping the ministries from feeding the homeless because he says there has to be consistency to the law.
“What’s the quality of that hot dog? Where did it come from?” Mayor William Bell snapped when asked about the situation.
Don Williams of Bridge Builders Ministries said that police also stopped his group from feeding the homeless. Williams noted that there is nothing in the city’s law that addresses feeding the homeless for free from a truck, so the Mayor and police are acting beyond the bounds of the law.
A new report in the New York Times says that homeless children in New York City have reached the highest level since the Great Depression.
The report shows a pattern in New York of rents rising while low-income wages such as jobs with fast food restaurants have stagnated making it impossible for many one-parent families to be able to afford a place to live.
However, at least two-thirds of the homeless children in New York do not have a working parent in their family and many of those children have parents addicted to drugs or alcohol.
The waiting list for public housing in the city has close to 250,000 people according to the Times report. The number of poor in the city has risen to the level that almost half of those in the city are living at or below the poverty line.
New York is not the only city dealing with a problem concerning homeless children. The United States is has the second highest rate of child poverty in any developed nation, behind only Romania.