Wednesday, February 19, 2014

Chick-fil-A Update



Do You Remember When
Two years ago Chick-fil-A made national headlines when company president Dan Cathy spoke out in support of traditional marriage.  Liberals and gays came unglued and launched massive protests against the restaurant chain.  Several mayors spoke out saying they would not allow any more Chick-fil-As to be built in their cities.  They tried boycotting the Christian owned company, but that backfired.  Instead, Chick-fil-A had a world record day with many locations selling out of food to the hundreds of thousands of supporters.   I remember that day very well because I had lunch there that day to show my support, and had to stand in line.

I was not showing my support for the man because of WHAT he said, but rather for his “freedom of speech”, and “freedom of religion”.   The thing that must be remembered is this man is not anti-gay.  I know for a fact Chick-fil-A has some gay employees, and like most companies they have a company policy against inquiring about anyone’s sexual orientation.  He merely spoke in support of traditional marriage.   
Is it any surprise that the only news the liberal mainstream media has reported concerning Chick-fil-A has only been the negative?

Remember recently when the ice storm hit the south?  The mainstream media showed footage of miles of cars stranded on the frozen interstates.  Several national news broadcasts that I saw reported about school kids trapped on busses for almost 24 hours because of all of the ice and parents going frantic wondering where their kids were, In all of the icy gloom and doom.    I bet you didn’t hear about the heroic and generous actions of a Chick-fil-A along Highway 280 in Birmingham, Alabama, did you?

Mark Meadows, owner of the Chick-fil-A closed early the day of the storm and sent all of his employees home.  However, the employees and Meadows soon discovered that they were not going to be able to get home with all of the stranded motorists stuck on the roads.  Some of the cars near the restaurant had been stranded for up to 7 hours.

Audrey Pitt, manager of the Chick-fil-A described the conditions:
“Our store is about a mile and a half from the interstate and it took me two hours to get there.  It was a parking lot as far as I could see.  At one point there were more people walking than driving.”

Meadows and his employees fired up the kitchen and began preparing chicken sandwiches as fast as they could.  They prepared several hundred sandwiches and then Meadows and his staff headed out and began distributing the hot meals to the stranded motorists on both sides of Highway 280.

Some of the drivers tried to pay them for the sandwiches, but Meadows and his employees refused to take a single penny.  Pitt explained why:
“This company is based on taking care of people and loving people before you’re worried about money or profit.  We were just trying to follow the model that we’ve all worked under for so long and the model that we’ve come to love. There was really nothing else we could have done but try to help people any way we could.”

However, Meadows and Pitt were not through with their Good Samaritan efforts.  They helped push cars off the roads, up inclines and whatever else they could do to help.  Then they kept the restaurant open overnight so that stranded motorists could have a warm place to be.  A number of motorists slept in booths or on the benches.

Then in the morning, they again fired up the kitchen and prepared chicken biscuits for their overnight guests and once again they refused to accept any payment.  During that 24 hour period, this Chick-fil-A restaurant opened their kitchen, their doors and their hearts to hundreds of stranded motorists and they did so refusing to accept any payment.  As one source put it, Meadows and his staff lived up to the words Jesus spoke in Matthew 25:35 which states:
“For I was hungry, and you gave Me something to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me something to drink; I was a stranger, and you invited Me in…”

Their actions were truly generous and heroic as they also braved the frigid temperatures to hand out hundreds of hot meals to complete strangers.  And I bet you never heard anything about this from the mainstream media.   It was too much against their liberal standards to report a Christian company doing something so positive for so many.

If you live in the Birmingham area, make sure you stop in and visit the Chick-fil-A near Highway 280 to thank them for their generosity and Christian example.  While you’re there, order something to eat and give them your business as I think they deserve it.




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