Dear Father in Heaven, Thanks for all the blessings that You poured out on us this day. I am so excited about how this day went. Lord, we had only one bump in the road, and I am sure You will take care of that down the road. Lord, help us to keep serving You as we go forward each day. Lord, I pray today for Joanne Fortney and for New Hope Ministries as she and others step out in faith to work for You. Please bless all those who serve You at New Hope. In the name of Jesus, I pray. Amen.
Good Wednesday evening, my dear brothers and sisters. As you can see, it gets later each night. What a busy, busy day. Up early as normal to take care of the animals. Next I watched for our trash and recycle haulers and gifted them some dollars. I had $10 in my hand for each of the five workers when I remembered that God said about helping the "least of them" so I upped the dollars to $25 each. Now watch what happened. At 10:00 AM Grant and I were off to New Hope Ministries in Mechanicsburg, PA. New Hope Ministries is now helping smaller food pantries like ours with food help. Today they gave us lots and lots of potatoes, salad mix, iced coffee, and about 170 packs of fresh rolls for our distribution on Saturday. On the way home we picked up 20 frozen turkeys at the food store for 99 cents per pound, and we paid for them. We had one person give us a $300 donation for turkeys. These 20 came in at $300.50. How about that for God working things out? Now let's see, $125 turned into a "FULL TRAILER" of food, and it is full. We had other donations to help cover the cost of turkeys and many turkeys dropped including 25 from Boyer Funeral Home. I am pleased to tell you that if I counted right, we now have enough turkeys to cover our distribution on Saturday. Praise God also for the cold weather, as we are using our outside freezer (our food pantry trailer). I must get to the message, but I had to tell you just how we were blessed today. Tomorrow, up for another load of free bread.
The Story, Day 14.
Luke 2:3 - And everyone went to his own town to register. 4 So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. (NIV)
One thing we do not talk about when telling the real Christmas story about the birth of Jesus is just how long this trip is. When we look at the Bible it tell us that old Caesar put out the word that people were to go and register, and then we find Mary and Joseph at Bethlehem. It is estimated that the trip from Nazareth to Bethlehem took at least three days. So my mind gets to thinking about this young virgin mother, named Mary, who is riding on the back of a sure-footed donkey, who would be sitting on the donkey sideways (side-saddle, but they did not have saddles). Now Joseph would be walking. I would think they would need to bunk down at night for a few hours, and maybe they would have friends along the way where they could get out of the cold night air. Could you see it, Joseph walked for three days and when arriving they would ask him for ID and he would say, gosh, I walked off without it, I will be right back. Just kidding, folks, my mind is tired tonight. As I stop for today, I wonder how many men today would walk three days to register to pay taxes. I would think there would be few taxpayers. And what about Mary? Ladies, picture yourself nine months pregnant and needing to ride a donkey for at least three days in a row. Dare I say that not many women would be going along for that ride if it were today. However, if it were today we would more than likely make the trip in a van or SUV and get there in hours. Please think about those things ... I need to get to bed. Let's pray first.
Dear Father in Heaven, Please keep watching over this line, and please be with the families of those killed in the shooting last night, and even with the killer's family. Be also with those who were wounded and heal them. Thanks for taking care of all of us. God, please, please be with all of the people on this earth. Again, thanks for the blessings of today. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen.
Now go forth and share your blessings, and then watch them grow.
Love ya, Pastor Dan.
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