Check on your Minnesota friends and family members

Please:

Check on your Minnesota people. (including college students and others away from home)

Lay aside all you are reading, hearing or watching, and be ready to simply listen. Give the people you love a place--outside of the friends, neighbors, and coworkers right in it--where they can be seen and heard and held.  

Pray.

You don't have to feel you know the whole picture, or the correct picture, or the picture that aligns with your beliefs or perspectives. Just pray. God's way is not our own, and is not directed or hindered by our views, labels, or divisions. God knows what needs doing. 

If it is hard to find words, one way to pray without telling God what to do or how to do it is simply to say to God, 

"Here now, with you, for _____". 

Repeat with as many different people or groups as you feel led.  

Help.

Here is an organization that, for years, has mobilized volunteers from faith communities into schools to provide take-home, weekend, meal ingredients to food-insecure families of children who rely on school-provided breakfasts and lunches during the week.  With their massive infrastructure and strong local connections, they are working now to care for families whose needs are exponentially greater in this time. A donation here immediately becomes food reaching children and families who need it.