Spring Into Action

"He is like a tree planted by water, that sends out its roots by the stream, and does not fear when heat comes, for its leaves remain green, and is not anxious in the year of drought, for it does not cease to bear fruit.”   Jeremiah 17:8

This weekend, people all around the world are celebrating Earth Day by planting trees and flowers and talking about ways we can improve our environment.  Most cities and towns will have some type of community event, inviting everyone out to talk about how we can be better stewards of our natural resources.

As Christians, we know that God is the creator of all things in heaven and on Earth, and we believe that not only should we be good stewards of the earth He has given us, but also sowers of seeds in His kingdom, reaching out to those less fortunate and inviting them to share the love of the Lord.

On Friday and Saturday, the Mission Athens team joined forces with the Central Youth Ministry for "Spring Into Action" weekend.  During this event, our members worked side by side with our teens to plant flowers, spread mulch, and beautify two different areas in our community, Fifth Avenue Apartments and Houston Court apartments. 

A few months ago, the City of Athens Federal Housing Coordinator, Mr. Pippens, came and spoke with our Mission Athens team about ways we can best serve residents in the federal housing areas.  The idea for this project during our Spring Into Action weekend was born at that meeting, and many volunteers worked tirelessly to make the weekend a success.

Members at Central Church of Christ donated shrubs, bulbs, plants, and mulch as well as contributing other donations to help our youth have the materials they needed for the project.  Additionally, our youth team planned activities and games for the residents to enjoy as we invited members of these communities to come out and get to know us throughout the weekend.

It was a lot of work, but it was also a lot of fun, as we got to know some of our neighbors and rolled up our sleeves together to improve our community. 

What a beautiful sight to behold--God's children ages 8 to 80 working together side by side in His kingdom to make our little corner of His earth, Athens, Alabama, just a little bit more beautiful.  We thank God for the opportunity He has given us to serve our community, and a huge THANK YOU to all the volunteers who worked so hard to plant seeds of His love in our little town!

Seeing the Unseen

"The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because He has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed." Luke 4:18

On Sunday, April 1, the Mission Athens team hosted a guest speaker at Central Church of Christ from the nearby Lincoln Village Ministry in Huntsville, AL.  Darren Raby is an old friend of the family at Central, having worked as Central's youth minister several years ago.

These days, Darren and his family are devoted to Lincoln Village Ministry.  During his message Sunday night, Darren shared the story of how this ministry has evolved over the past 20 years, sharing both the highs and lows of this journey.  Even when faced with obstacles, adversity, and challenges, the ministry continues to grow and thrive, proof that God's presence is with those who are working tirelessly to help the poor, the orphans, the downtrodden, and those "unseen" members of our communities who many choose to ignore.  You can learn more about the Lincoln Village Ministry by visiting their website at http://www.lincolnvillageministry.com/.

As the Mission Athens team continues to work to shine a light upon and serve those less fortunate in our community of Athens, AL, it is truly inspirational to hear stories like those of the Lincoln Village Ministry.  Over the past 2-3 years, Mission Athens has grown, changed, done many things right and made some mistakes along the way, too.  We are learning, searching, seeking and praying that we will continue to do the Lord's work in our community.  The Bible implores us as Christians to love the unlovable, to see the unseen, and to elevate the "least of these" by helping them, serving them, and loving them just as Jesus did time and again throughout His life.

Throughout the past few years, our team has helped lots of children, lots of elderly widows, and lots of people who are battling life-threatening illnesses.  In most of these cases, it is easy to rally support and assistance.  However, we have also helped convicted criminals, people who struggle with addictions, people who have failed relationships, and people who have made a lifetime of really bad choices.  These are the types of people most folks cross the street to avoid.  But, the cold, hard truth is that each of these people has a soul.  Each of these people deserve to be washed in the blood of Jesus, who died for them just as He died for us.

If we, God's children, don't help these unseen, forgotten, poverty-stricken people, who will?  Our dilemma is not agreeing to help, it is opening our eyes to see the opportunities all around us.  Our battle is not against the will to help--most Christians have lots of good will to help, to write a check, to support a cause.  Our battle is against indifference.  The indifference that causes each of us to blindly overlook the dozens of people we meet each day who need Jesus.

Our daily lives are consumed with our jobs, our kids, our friends, our families, our Facebook, and our sports teams.  Because we only see our small, little worlds, we literally walk right past people at the grocery store, at our kids' schools, and on the street who are desperate for someone to SEE them.  We have become a group of people with good intentions who are too wrapped up in our own little lives to SEE the moments God is giving us to reach out our hands and share His love with these precious souls.

The battle is against indifference.

We don't know what exactly the future holds for Mission Athens, but we have faith that God will guide us in this venture.  Our prayer is that our efforts will grow in our community, touching more lives and bringing more people to Jesus.  We also pray that passion and commitment will grow, and that we will zealously seek out opportunities to share God's love. 

At the end of his message, Darren shared the attached video that challenges all of us to see the unseen as God sees them....His precious children who desperately need us to take action and help them. The video says it all.

Exceedingly, Abundantly Beyond Our Expectations

"Now all glory to God, who is able to do exceedingly, abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to His power working in us."  Ephesians 3:20

All throughout the Bible, God gives us examples of helping the poor and feeding the hungry.  In the book of Exodus, God fed his chosen people manna from heaven when they were wandering in the desert.  In the New Testament, Jesus fed the multitudes with just a few loaves of bread and fish.  At a wedding celebration, Jesus turned water into wine.  All throughout the Bible, there are examples of God and Jesus feeding and nurturing their followers both physically and spiritually.

On Sunday, March 4, the Mission Athens team organized a congregational night of service benefiting the Full Tummy Project.  The Full Tummy Project is a local organization that provides bags of food to elementary school children on Fridays to help them have enough to eat on the weekends.  The program is simple, anonymous, and discreet while at the same time sustaining kids who live in poverty in our community.

Seventeen million Americans live in food insecure households, and as the economy continues to struggle, so do many local families.  School children benefit from breakfast and lunch meals that are served at school, but on the weekends, many of these kids do not have enough to eat.  By simply placing a small bag of pop-top ravioli, cereal, peanut butter crackers, Pop Tarts, fruit cups and juice in their backpacks on Fridays, we can make a significant difference in their ability to grow and thrive.

About a month ago, the Mission Athens team set a goal of creating 500 bags of food during our night of service to provide enough food for the Full Tummy Project to make it through the month of March, which includes extra bags of food for Spring Break.  We solicited donations from the congregation and placed bins in the hallway as well as accepted monetary gifts for the program.  A few weeks ago, we began to worry if we had over committed and would be able to have enough for 500 bags...we prayed fervently that God would provide.

But then, the week before the event, the donations poured in, and once again, the family of faith at Central Church of Christ blew us away.  We collected food donations from co-workers as well as our church members, and we also were blessed with over $1,300 in cash donations to purchase food for the event.

On Friday, we began organizing the donations for the night of service, but we were interrupted by severe weather that once again hit our community.  On Saturday, as the clouds parted and the sun shone on a clear day, we headed out to shop for food for Athens' hungry kids.

On Sunday, volunteers came together and worked tirelessly unpacking all the items and sorting them into bins for our assembly lines that we set up in the church.  Then, at 5 pm, not a parking spot was available as so many of our brothers and sisters showed up and rolled up their sleeves to pack and pray over the bags of food for our neighbors in need.

Among the volunteers that night, we were blessed to see a sweet couple who sustained major damage to their home during Friday's tornado.  They are currently living in a local hotel, and when I asked them what they were doing there, they simply said, "Where else would we be?  We want to help these kids."  What an inspiration to see them sacrificing their time to help others even after they themselves had just weathered such a significant loss.

We had volunteers from the ages of 2 to 82 packing bags.  One of our deacons set up a room for our preschoolers to help out and pack bags, too.  These precious little children packed more than 30 bags for their friends who need food.

We prayed and we packed, and in about 20 minutes, all those helping hands accomplished exceedingly, abundantly beyond our expectations!  God showed up at Central Church of Christ Sunday night and showed us that He is able to provide far more than we could ever hope for.  We were so excited to add together the totals from our four assembly lines and announce to the group that we had packed.......

1,239 bags of food!

Thanks to God's blessings of our generous church family, the Full Tummy Project will not only have enough bags for the month of March, but we will have enough for the remainder of the school year.  What a beautiful sight to behold!



Mission Athens Night of Service March 4, 2012

"Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God."  Matthew 4:4

Several months ago, I read the book "When Helping Hurts."  This book is truly a must read for anyone who is serious about mission work and wants to live a mission-focused life helping those who live in poverty.  Over and over in the Gospel, Jesus commands Christians to extend our hands to the poor, but many modern-day Christians scratch our heads because we simply don't know how.  Other than handing money to a homeless person on the street, how can we truly help the poor?

The authors of "When Helping Hurts" go to great lengths to demonstrate that povery is not just about being broke.  Poverty is about "broken-ness."  Broken trust, broken relationships, broken finances, broken dreams and broken lives.  If we truly want to help those living in poverty and bring them to Jesus, we can't just show up and hand out money.  We must first identify what is broken in our own lives and talk about how Jesus helped us heal.  Helping those living in poverty means we first have to come to terms with our own broken-ness and relate how Jesus changed our lives.  By sharing our stories, then we may be able to share the love of Jesus with those in need around us.  Sure, it helps if we take care of their pressing physical needs first, and that's what Mission Athens is all about, but we also have to take care of spiritual needs.  There may be no better way to do that than to share our testimony of times in our lives when God took care of us in a similar circumstance.

One of the points in the book that hit home with me the most was this one.  Through our Mission Athens work, I have had many "AHA" moments that have truly changed my life for the better, and I know that others on our Mission Athens team feel the same way.  That feeling of God working in our lives is one of the reasons I started this blog, to share those stories with all of you and share the lessons we are all learning together.

I have been able to relate to being cold, to not having enough money to pay the bills, to burying a loved one, to praying over a sick child, and to needing help getting a little further down the road.  Throughout my life, I have had moments when I have been down on my luck, frustrated, broke, sad, lonely, and stuck in the darkness of grief.  But, this week as we prepare for our second night of congregational service at Central, I was struck with a plain, simple truth: 

I have never been hungry.

Usually, I start these blog posts relating an experience that I have had and how I tied that experience in some way to the Mission Athens case we were working on that week.  I have been able to relate my own broken life to the broken lives we are trying to help, and I have been able to see how God has played a huge role in making me whole again with the hopes that He will do that for our Mission Athens cases.  But not this week.

I have never been hungry.

Some of my friends who are reading this blog may laugh and say, "You are always hungry!"  It is true--I do love to eat.  But waking up and thinking about what's for breakfast, what's for lunch, and where can we go out to eat for dinner are not the same things as being hungry.

My entire life, I have been blessed with plenty of food.  I can never remember a time when we did not have a stocked pantry or refrigerator or when we did not have not just one, but several options for each meal.  All week, I have been racking my brain, trying to remember a time when I was hungry so I could write about it in this blog and relate in some small way to the plans that we have for our night of service.  But the cold, hard fact is:

I have never been hungry.

The only time I remember being stressed out about food doesn't really count, because I am blessed with a loving family.  When my husband and I got married, our family told us we were too young, and we didn't have enough money.  They were right on both counts, but we got married anyway, planning as most young people do to live on love.  That didn't really work out, and we were trying so hard to make our small budget work.  I remember my first trip to the grocery store as a married woman just like it was yesterday.  I planned our meals and went to Foodland.  When the clerk said the total was $50, I almost fainted, but I paid her, and I planned to stretch that food as far as it would go.

Stuart and I came home from a trip to see my parents only to find that our power had gone out and all the food from that shopping trip had spoiled.  I sat down and started crying.  What were we going to do?  I called my sweet grandmother, and my grandparents fed us for a week until we could make it to our next paycheck.

See?  I have never been hungry.

Unfortunately, there are 17 million children in the United States today who live in food insecure households.  As the unemployment numbers continue to rise, more and more moms and dads do not have enough money to buy enough food for their families.  Grocery prices have risen at a steep rate over the past few years, and there simply is not enough money to make ends meet in many families.  That means that more and more children are relying on their free and reduced breakfasts and lunches at school to sustain them. 

But, what about the weekends?

Many children go home to little or no food on the weekends.  They know the feeling of being hungry--they live with it each and every day.  It may be the first thing they think about when they wake up and the last thing they think about before they go to bed.

I have never been hungry, but they are hungry every day.

On Sunday, March 4, Central Church of Christ will host a Night of Service.  During that evening, we will assemble bags of food for these kids to take home on the weekends as part of a local initiative called The Full Tummy Project.  You can learn more about Full Tummy by visiting their website at http://www.fulltummyproject.org/.

The Full Tummy Project currently supports several elementary schools in the Athens, AL community by placing bags of food in kids' backpacks each Friday afternoon so that they have something to eat over the weekend.  The children are selected for the program by their schools' teachers and administrators, and the bags are placed in backpacks when the children are at recess, so it is all very discreet for the kids involved.

We are asking everyone to participate in donating items for these bags. I am hosting a donation drive at my workplace, and I encourage all of you to do the same thing sometime this month.  Let's pray that we can collect as much food as possible and make a big difference for these hungry kids.

Please bring your food donations to Central Church of Christ on Sunday morning, March 4.  The Mission Athens team will work that afternoon to get all the donations organized.  Then, that evening, the entire congregation will work together to "Pack and Pray" over each Full Tummy bag.

Because we need each bag to be consistent, it is very important to follow this list of food very specifically.  Thank you in advance for your help in making this night of service a great one!  We can't wait to see what a difference we all can make when we work together.

Here is the list of items that are needed:

REMEMBER: Items MUST be in single serve packaging, easy to open, and ready to eat without any preparation. We are unaware of conditions at home (microwave availability and/or adult supervision). Please send only 100% Juice boxes.
 Breakfast ideas
Individual boxes of cereal
Cereal/breakfast bars
Ready to eat oatmeal with fruit cups (usually found on aisle with applesauce)
Pop Tarts
: Lunch Ideas
Vienna Sausages
Peanut butter/cheese crackers
: Dinner Ideas
Chef Boyardee Pop-Top meals such as ravioli, spaghetti, chicken and rice, etc.
Spaghetti-Os (pop-top only)
Ready to eat soups (pop-top only, not condensed)
Beannee Weenees
Ready to eat rice cups
: Snack Ideas
Fruit cups/ applesauce cups
Raisins or any other individually packaged dried fruit
Trail mix or nuts
Granola bars
Fruit chews
Single serve packs of crackers (ie. Goldfish, wheat thins, teddy grahams, etc) :

Extremely Close

"Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for You are with me.  Your rod and staff, they comfort me."  Psalms 23:4

He was born on a Monday, and he died on a Tuesday, and he only lived 52 years, 2 months and 23 days in between those two days.  The older I get, the shorter his life seems to me.  It has been 11 years, 9 months and 9 days since the Worst Day of My Life, and in some ways it seems like it was yesterday, and in some ways it feels so far away.

My father had his first heart attack when I was just 16 years old.  I was in church.  My mother had stayed home with him that morning because we all thought he had a stomach bug.  I remember I was wearing a green dress with a black bow that was actually my sister's and I had snuck it out of her closet without her knowing it, and I was sitting with my friend Victor during preaching when we heard the church phone ring.  Whenever the church phone rings during Sunday morning service, it is always bad news, and I remember feeling a shiver as I wondered who that dreaded call was about.  When Mr. Threet came and got me from the pew, I was stunned.  He pulled me into the hallway and told me to meet my parents at the hospital.  My brother and sister were both already gone to college, and that morning had been so exciting for me because my mother let me drive to Florence to church by myself, a very big deal to a 16-year-old.  I cried the whole way from church to the hospital, praying Daddy would live and that I wouldn't have a wreck and that my sister wouldn't kill me when she got to the hospital and saw me wearing her green dress.

God gave us 8 more years with him after that first heart attack.  In those 8 years, we spent a lot of time in hospitals.  My brother and I spent one night sleeping together on a waiting room sofa in the UAB ICU waiting area, terrified as the ambulances screamed through the night.  Even though I was 17 and he was 22, we were so scared that it didn't feel at all awkward to be wrapped up in each other's arms on that couch.  We prayed, and we prayed, and we prayed.  And he lived through that open heart surgery.  He lived 7 more years after that.

Even after a heart attack, and even after a quadrouple bypass surgery, our Daddy beat the odds.  He was a living, breathing, walking, talking, laughing, answered prayer.  He lived, oh, how he lived!  He lived each and every day loving all of us, making friends, spreading joy and laughter, leading his community, loving his wife, pulling off hilarious practical jokes on his friends, plowing the ground, loving the Lord.  He got mad, he got sad, he cried, he prayed, he ate, he tried to lose weight, he got new puppies, he hated people who were fake, he got in arguments, he talked on the phone all the time, he drove a truck, he smelled like sunshine and strength and sweat, and he was our hero.  He was larger than life.

Then, shortly after having some extensive dental work, he caught a virus in his heart.  That same heart that had been attacked, that same heart that had been bypassed, that same heart that held so much love and laughter--why did that heart have to get a virus?  Why not the heart of a meaner man?  Why this good, pure, loving heart?  The doctors told us in that hospital waiting room that his heart was now too weak.  There was a high chance he would not survive a year.  They prepared us for the worst, and they talked about the chances of success with a heart transplant, which was still a new procedure back then, and they didn't think it would work.

We prayed, and we prayed, and we prayed, and we prayed.  I quit my job and moved home to spend more time with Daddy and plan my wedding with my Mom.  I was 22 years old, and I was terrified he wouldn't be there to walk me down the aisle.  I prayed every night that he would live.  And he did.

He lived!  He walked me down the aisle.  He beat the odds--once again, his lion heart rallied and kept on beating!  We felt like champions, we prayer warriors, he lived!

And then, one Easter weekend when I was 24 and a newlywed, we all came home to be together.  My brother and his wife, my sister and her husband, my new husband and me, my Mama and Daddy, and two precious nieces who had joined our clan.  We were all together under one roof--a rare and wonderful weekend of the entire family around one table.  But all weekend, he wasn't himself.  He was quiet, he didn't laugh much, he didn't eat much, and late one night, I found him sitting in his chair in the den, tears streaming down his cheeks as he listened to gospel music on TV.  This sight shook me up--a child never gets used to seeing their Daddy cry.  I walked into the room, and he asked me if he died, if my brother and sister and I would speak at his funeral.  Of course we would, but he wasn't going to die--he always lived!  I got mad, as all-knowing 24-year-olds do, and I told him not to even say such things.  On Sunday when I was loading the car to leave, I was still mad at him.  I told him I loved him, but he knew and I knew that I was annoyed. 

My sister, who was expecting her son at the time, stayed with my parents that week with her baby girl.  On Tuesday, Daddy told her to come and jump in the truck with him.  She left her baby daughter with our Mama, and she and Daddy went to a neighbor's house.  As they got out of the truck, Daddy started telling a joke to the neighbor, and then he died.  Just like that.  The ambulance came, but they never revived him.  They took him to the hospital and began to work to try to bring him back, but to no avail

My phone rang just after supper.  I was wearing a grey shirt and black pants.  I had just finished cleaning up our little kitchen in our newlywed house from the supper I had burned, and I was sitting on the couch watching a Biography of Princess Diana.  Stuart was in the driveway changing the oil in our cars and I am sure wishing he had a bride who could cook.  My brother-in-law was the voice on the other end of the line, and he said, "Honey, let me speak to Stuart."  I knew it was something terrible.  I gave the phone to Stuart, who turned away so I wouldn't see his tears.  All I knew was that Daddy was in an ambulance on the way to the hospital, and my poor pregnant sister had been standing beside him when he dropped to the ground at her feet.

We quickly packed our bags and threw them in the car.  Stuart drove so fast, but it was over a 2-hour drive home.  We prayed, and we prayed, and we prayed, but this time it was different.  We both knew it in our hearts.  And then, when we were about 45 minutes from home, a very beautiful star fell right out of the sky right in front of us.  And we knew his bright light was gone from our lives forever.

True to his request, my brother, my pregnant sister, and I all spoke at his funeral.  I know that God got us through that day.  We lived in a town of 1,500 people, and well over 3,000 came to his visitation and funeral.  He was a great man, a man who was loved by all who knew him, a man who lived his life well.

Since then, my brother, sister and I have had 6 more children between us.  We have laughed, we have cried, we have loved, we have fought, we have grown closer together, we have been broken-hearted.  We are so proud of his legacy, and we love seeing him in these magical 8 grandkids, who each have a little piece of him living in their hearts, even though they didn't know him.

He would have loved Mission Athens.  It would be right up his alley.  When he died, several people came by the house to give my mother money.  He had given so many people loans that she had never known about.  One man who none of us knew brought his chainsaw to give my mother.  He said he didn't have the money to repay the loan, but he thought my Mom could maybe use the chainsaw.  We were so touched by all the things people did to comfort us.

Those days following his death are so poignant in my memory.  The horror of going to the funeral home and picking out a casket, the feeling of extreme exhaustion that comes from night after night of tears and no sleep, the huge amounts of food that none of us felt like eating, the sad dogs who missed him so much, the endless line of hugs and stories at the funeral home, the blisters on our feet from uncomfortable shoes, the throbbing headache, the raw, bleeding heartache, the smell of him on his sheets, the tragic discovery that a well-meaning friend had washed his clothes and sheets and his smell was gone, his handkerchief and pocket change I carried in my purse, all his sticky notes with doodles all around the house, sitting in his messy truck and crying huge sobs of pain.  It was a wonderful, beautiful, painful, awful, nightmare, but it was real, and it was true--it was life in its rawest form.

God does not promise us an easy road.  He does not promise us that He will answer every prayer.  God simply tells us to follow Him.  I spent about 2 years following my father's death being really angry with God.  I didn't pray except to tell Him I was mad.  I had crippling anxiety attacks when I was in large crowds because I would see my father's face in the crowd and for a brief moment think he had come back.  My heart grew very cold, and I didn't attend church very often.  My mother had a completely different response--she drew so close to God.  She told me He was the only thing keeping her going.  I was in awe of her faith and still am, but then God sent me an angel to remind me He was always with me.

On a Monday, my baby boy was born.  I kept my Daddy's picture in my hospital room.  I stared into his eyes and introduced him to my son.  I felt his love for me in a whole new way when I held my own child in my arms.  I knew then that I had to live.  I couldn't let resentment and bitterness rob me of my life.  I vowed that day to be grateful for the time I had with him, for the gift of being his child.  I made a promise to myself that I would try to love my babies as much as he had loved me and to teach them to use their lives to spread joy as he had.  I made peace with God.  Shortly after that birth, I found a wonderful new church home, where my husband and I started our family and grew closer to each other and to God together.

For the past two weeks, I have been thinking a lot about death and about how painful it is.  Last week, the Mission Athens team along with a dear friend in our church helped a family with funeral expenses for their teenaged daughter who was tragically killed in an accident.  I can only imagine their aching pain after this terrible loss.  It gives me comfort to know that God hears our prayers for this family--won't you pray for them, too? 

Last weekend, following this painful Mission Athens case, I went with friends to see the movie "Incredibly Loud and Extremely Close," which chronicles a little boy's grief following his father's death in the World Trade Center on 9/11.  It was very hard for me to watch, as it brought back so many painful, raw memories. 

Then, yesterday would have been my father's 64th birthday.  Now that I am 36, I am just 16 years away from being the age my Daddy was when he died.  I don't know if I will die at 52, but I think about it all the time.  Am I using each day to make a difference?  Am I spreading God's love?  Am I loving my husband and children enough to last them a lifetime?  Am I a person of grace and mercy or a person of judgement and bitterness?  Am I using all the gifts God has given me to bring glory to Him?  Am I a good and faithful servant?

The sharp knife of a short life makes me ask these questions.  For those of you who are still reading this blog and who have not experienced a death in your immediate family, thanks be to God!  For those of you who have, you know exactly what I mean.  Death, especially a sudden, tragic death of someone who was too young to be gone so soon, changes all of us who survive it forever.

I have come to see my father's death as a tool that God used to bring me closer to Him.  I still can't make sense of it, and I have stopped asking "why."  Instead, I am so thankful God gave him to me for 8 years past that Sunday when a scared 16-year-old in a green dress drove crying to the hospital.  I don't know why some people have to lose a parent at too young an age.  I don't know why some people have to bury their children.  I don't know why others live for years with horrible diseases.  I don't understand, and it makes my heart ache and my head hurt when I hear about all the tragedy in this world.

I simply know that because He lives, I can face tomorrow.  I know that without Him, life is truly tragic.  He is the fount of every blessing, the well of living water, the beginning and the end.  He gives me hope that I will see my father again.  He gives me the strength to put one foot in front of the other on days when my heart is weary, and I am burdened with a load of cares too big for me to handle.  He is the way, the truth and the light, and He has given us this life with all the joy, all the pain, all the passion, all the laughter, all the heartache and all the craziness.  It is all part of His plan for us. 

He wants us to bear each other's burdens, and we all know that death is coming for all of us.  It is a certainty, it is inescapable.  There is a comfort that comes from surviving death--I know now that I can truly "do all things through Christ who strengthens me," even survive The Worst Day of My Life and bury my father.  I can move on and move up and keep going and keep growing.  It is all part of this beautiful gift of life.

To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven;

A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a tiem to pluck up that which has been planted;

A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;

A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;

A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;

A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;

A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;

A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.

Ecclesiastes 3:1-9



Spreading The Word

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."  John 1:1

When did you get your first Bible?  I remember having a small, white copy of the New Testament that I carried to Sunday school as a small child.  I also remember coloring in it and getting a hard pinch from my Mama during preaching, but that is a story for another blog post about naughty little girls who grow up just fine, thank you very much!

There are two Bibles that I have received that were very special to me.  The first was given to me by a beloved preacher who presented it to me just after my baptism when I was 15.  It was pink, and he had it engraved with my name in silver.  On the inside cover, he wrote me a note, and he included this verse from Psalms, which has always been a favorite ever since, "How can a young man keep his way pure? By living according to Your word."  Psalms 119:9.  The second Bible was given to my husband and I by my father-in-law just after we were married.  It is the first item we had that was engraved with our names as "Mr. and Mrs."  Both were thoughtful gifts from godly men, and I treasure them to this day.

In 2012, the Mission Athens team would like to give the gift of the gospel to all those we touch.  Whether we help with a past due utility bill, makeover a house, give food or clothes, we would like to also give the gift of Jesus.

We have kicked off our 2012 Mission Athens Bible Drive this week.  We are asking all our friends to donate new or gently used Bibles that are not engraved with names beginning now through the end of February.  We prefer to have the NIV, New American Standard or The Message translations as these are easier to read and understand.  Collection bins have been placed in the front hallway at Central Church of Christ.

Thank you in advance for helping us give The Word as part of our work this year.  We hope these Bibles will become treasured by all who receive them, and that God will work in each and every life we touch through Mission Athens in 2012.

The Well

"But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him will be a well of water springing up into eternal life."  John 4:14

One of the things that we have learned over the past year is that there are many people who do not feel comfortable attending church regularly.  Perhaps it is the nice clothes we all are wearing; perhaps it is that they don't know the songs we sing; perhaps they have had a bad church experience in their past; perhaps they don't feel good enough to go to church, or perhaps it is some other reason.  Who knows?  We just know that a very real and tangible barrier exists between "church" and the "unchurched."

In a few weeks on February 11, a small group of families will be hosting a special event called "The Well."  They asked us to help spread the word on this blog.  Please share this information with all you know--all are invited to attend.  "The Well" will begin at 6 p.m. and will include a time of worship and fellowship with a meal provided.  It will take place at The Athens Visitor Center, 100 N. Beaty Street.  This event is for anyone who wants to know more about Jesus, and we hope to encourage families who want to learn more about our Lord.

Jesus has not promised us that if we follow Him our lives will be burden-free, but he has promised us that He cares and wants us to cast our burdens upon Him.  We hope to share the gift of His everlasting love, His living water, to all who are hungering and thirsting for a new purpose in their lives.  Please help us share the news of this event, and please invite your friends who need Jesus to attend.