"I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me."
MATTHEW 25:36
In a small house he built and wired himself, Kelley Holmes has taken on a new mission right out of Gospels.
Amid a successful career as builder and electrician, the Nashville man left his work for God's, ministering to the naked, the sick and imprisoned with knowledge. He created the Be A Helping Hand Foundation.
Knowledge is the currency of advancement in this economy. And Holmes has been offering this wealth to former felons for the past eight years. They've learned from him, then gone on to well-paying jobs on construction sites. And they've entered these sites as skilled workers.
Inside this east Nashville house next to the city's most notorious drug ghetto, Holmes has offered these men in groups of 12 -- in classes after work -- training on electrical switches and everything in regards to wiring a home. A garage in the back of the house is the on-hands workshop, where commercial building light structures are worked on along with door bells, circuit breakers and everything from door bells to garage door openers.
On in the classroom, these human beings -- who simply made a wrong choice in life -- are encouraged to get their GEDs, receive counseling on bettering their relationships with their wives, get counseling for on-the-job questions to avoid obstacles to success and learn how to manage money. Helping hand students have built an entire house in east Nashville. It is beautiful home.
Here on the wall of the classroom, a simple poster tells these young men that knowledge and God are the real powers in life.
Holmes wants to renovate a warehouse he has purchased a few doors down the street for a larger structure to take in more men. He has sent 80 ex-felons and now providers and taxpayers into the workforce over the past eight years. Just think if he could double that number with a larger structure.
All he needs is our help. All he needs is our focus on the same Gospels, because these men were stripped naked of their dignity in prison because of their wrong choices; these men were sick in how they viewed life and what they got caught up in; and they were imprisoned with time to think about how they would want their lives to be different once on the outside.
Our corrections system, however, no longer cares about returning a better person with job skills to society. It is so overloaded with so many more people, that all available funding is just needed for housing and feeding. So ex-felons return to the same neighborhoods with just as poor opportunities for change but better chances of getting in trouble again.
That's why what Holmes is doing is so important.
Consider investing in something and someone for a better future and society.
Consider investing in the Gospels.
Consider investing in a program that teaches human beings to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps.
Consider contacting the Be A Helping Hand Foundation at (615) 227-6000 or e-mailing info@bahelpinghand.org. It needs monetary donations, donation of building equipment and materials, classroom instructional items, mentoring and volunteers with special events.
From what I was able to see one evening, God is there at 827 W. McKenzie Ave. waiting for us to recognize him in these human beings of Matthew 25.
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