I woke up the other night from a dream so real I had tears streaming down my face. It took everything in me not to wake Justin and have him go check, or watch the kids while I checked.

I don’t know if I should blame reading Lori Harris’ blog or the text I received earlier in the day or the fact that it was the coldest night of the year.  Maybe God is just using my dreams to wake me up.  In my dream state I saw a little girl, about 7 with short blonde hair and a dirty face. She was dressed in thin, tattered clothes. And she was sleeping, in the dark, at the entrance of my neighborhood, wrapped in old newspapers.

Even though it was 2am and 98% of me knew it wasn’t real, I had to talk myself down from going to check our neighborhood entrance, just in case.  (I can only imagine Justin’s face if I had actually woken him up!)

But the sad fact is, this situation is all too real. Maybe she wasn’t lying at the entrance of my subdivision, but on the floor of a trailer down the street with no heat and no blankets and busted out windows.  Maybe she wasn’t just cold, but hungry too.

Poverty has a name. It’s Victor and Tara and Johnny.  It’s children that I know.  That my girls know.

We are expecting up to 8 inches of snow today and I can’t wait to bundle my girls up and take them out to play.  Sledding and building snowmen and throwing snowballs.  

But another part of me worries about those kids down the street. Are they warm enough? Do they have enough food to eat?
We can’t ignore poverty. We can’t pretend it doesn’t exist or it doesn’t involve us. We need to be the hands and feet of Jesus, today.