🙌It's the Friday Call to Worship!🙌

Yesterday was American Thanksgiving - my favorite holiday! Here's an excerpt I wrote on Thanksgiving 2014 while serving in rural South Africa.

--------

"She called me to tell me she was hungry. Like a child who comes home from school and cries, "Mom, we don't have anything to eat!" This child hasn't had a mom to cry to since she was 12, when she found herself alone in a shack with her 8-year old brother. Now she's 21, trying to finish high school with a child of her own.

I brought groceries and sat down on her familiar porch. We'd spent enough time there for me to gently ask why she ran out of food this month. Two cousins came to live with her and her 18-year old brother. One is 14 in 5th grade, the other 19 in 10th grade. These cousins have no parents or birth certificates. My friend had turned to social services but was rejected. Now, she has a house full of teenage boys with no income, parents, or food.

My heart sunk to the pit of my not-empty stomach. My hungry friend was not in despair. I asked, "What is God saying to you?"

"They are staying with us, and God is making a big family. We will help each other."

She sits on that porch and doesn't see what she doesn't have. She sees family. She looks in an empty house and sees that it's full. She is no longer as an orphan.

I want to be like her on this Thanksgiving Day."

------

Today I won't pray only for daily bread, but for more mouths to feed it to. My formerly-orphaned friend was right. God is making a big family. Let's make space with wide-open arms. There will be more mouths to feed and the world's baggage in tow, but, "It's a big family. We will help each other."

"Enlarge the place of your tent, stretch your tent curtains wide, do not hold back…" - Isaiah 54:2

Let's worship! Listen to Kari Jobe's "Heal Our Land"