Blessing of the New AIO Building

Spirit of God—who loves all that you have made—thank you so much for the completed new food pantry for AIO.

We thank you for architects and builders, plumbers and roofers and electricians.

We thank you for the very generous and compassionate community in which we live that has given so much to allow this project to happen.

We thank you for volunteers of every sort who have done so much and given so much of their time and energy to help make this project a reality.

Among those is Liz, of course, who has carried the ball throughout this journey—who has been our mainstay from the beginning and without whom we could not have made this happen.

And we thank you for the clients—our neighbors and friends whom we hope will benefit greatly from all of this. 

We wish there were no one who needed this pantry, and we look forward to the day when this pantry—and food pantries everywhere—are no longer needed.

We are grateful for all of your help to us in this long and difficult, yet exciting, project. 

We are grateful for all the ways you helped us when we didn’t know it was you—when money, or the right person, or a generous donor—or whatever we needed—turned up at just the right moment.

It’s easy to forget that was you who was helping us—easy to think it was our work alone that made this project happen, easy to forget that this project matters as much to you, if not more, than it matters to us.

So help us to be worthy of all this richness that has come our way; to be kind to each other and the people we serve, and to not ever forget to be grateful for all the blessings we have received.

Amen.

(Marty Shaw, AIO Board Member, August 22, 2020)