On the Treasure Coast, faith feeds people. On Facebook, it just yells at them.
I had breakfast with a couple of my neighbors yesterday — the kind of people who make you feel like you wandered into a better America for an hour. Kind. Steady. Religious in the way our grandparents were: quietly, sincerely, without fanfare. Over coffee and eggs, they told me about the food bank they help run at their church near us.
They weren’t trying to make a point. They weren’t bragging. They were simply sharing what they’ve been seeing lately. And what they’re seeing has shaken them.
Before the shutdown, their little church food bank would get maybe 25 cars in a week.
Now? 150. That’s a 500% increase. That’s not a bump, that’s a tidal wave.
They have one rule — the same rule their grandparents lived by:
If someone is hungry, you feed them.
When they told me about the surge, the sadness wasn’t loud or dramatic. It was the quiet kind, the kind you hear only from people who are close enough to the ground to feel the tremors long before politicians admit there’s a quake.
Because here’s the truth nobody on cable news seems to grasp:
Food-bank lines don’t lie.
That right there is what faith looks like when you strip away the theatrics. No culture wars, no moral scorecards, no social-media sermons. Just simple, old-fashioned decency.
Which made the contrast I saw online earlier this week feel like whiplash.
Someone had posted the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers — food-at-home up 2.7%, meats and eggs up 5.2%. Nothing fancy, just the facts. Immediately, a woman in Mississippi — who proudly identifies herself as a Christian patriot — unleashed a blistering tirade:
“Get your head out of your asses! Groceries are DOWN! Utilities are DOWN! My power bill was DOWN! Only you f***ing DEMOCRATS complain! OPEN THE DAMN GOVERNMENT!”
I’ve seen more coherent arguments written in wet cement.
Here on the Treasure Coast, real Christians are feeding hundreds of families. In Mississippi, one is screaming obscenities at strangers because her power bill dropped 12 bucks.
Two versions of Christianity.
Two different worlds.
Only one looks anything like the Gospel.
Meanwhile, Florida, my adopted state, is doing its own dance with moral responsibility.
When a federal court ruled that states must release emergency SNAP funds during the shutdown, it wasn’t a suggestion. It wasn’t an invitation. It wasn’t optional.
The court ordered it. Mandatory. Do it. Now.
And while states around the country complied — California, Oregon, Washington, even some red states — Florida took one look at the court order and said:
“Nah.”
Not one additional SNAP dollar was released.
Not one family was spared from the food-bank line.
Not one acknowledgment that hunger doesn’t wait for political convenience.
Florida didn’t just ignore common sense. It ignored the law.
And the people paying the price are the same people my neighbors feed — the families who pulled into the line early, hoping the shelves wouldn’t be empty by the time their turn came.
And here’s the thing most politicians and Facebook warriors refuse to acknowledge: food banks are not bottomless. They are breaking under the weight of national neglect.
Food banks today are facing:
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Exploding demand — in some places doubling or tripling in weeks.
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Higher costs — inflation is pushing up the price of every pallet of food they buy.
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Reduced donations — because when working families are barely hanging on, they have less to spare.
- Logistical problems — food waste from oversized distributions, lack of refrigeration, volunteer shortages, and difficulty connecting families to housing, mental-health support, or transportation.
Food banks were never meant to be America’s first, last, and only hunger safety net.
But right now?
They’re it.
And my neighbors know it. They feel the strain in their backs, in their budgets, in their hearts. They’re fighting a quiet war against hunger with nothing but compassion, prayer, and canned goods.
I can’t pretend any of this is abstract for me.
I know what hunger looks like from the inside.
I remember sitting on the kitchen floor as a kid, opening cupboard doors like a ritual I already knew would lead nowhere. I remember the hollow sound of nothing. I remember the refrigerator humming like it was mocking me. No food. No safety net.
That kind of memory doesn’t fade.
It stays in your bones, and it sharpens your empathy like a blade.
So when someone online screams, “Groceries are DOWN!” because one of their bills dipped for a month, I don’t get angry. I just recognize the luxury of never having truly been hungry.
Meanwhile, my neighbors — the ones I had breakfast with — are in that church parking lot every week doing the thing that Christianity is supposed to be about in the first place: feeding the hungry, tending to the weary, showing mercy without judgment.
They don’t post Bible verses in all caps.
They don’t weaponize their faith against strangers online.
They don’t treat hunger as a partisan inconvenience.
They pack groceries, say a small prayer, and smile at people who desperately need kindness.
The holidays are coming, and the shelves will run thin. Donations will lag. Volunteers will tire. And the food-bank lines will stretch long before sunrise.
But I know something with absolute certainty:
The people doing God’s work, they’re the ones standing in a parking lot, filling bags.