Generosity

I've been thinking about generous people lately. Generosity is the reason that CSC exists. In the last few days this has come home to me in some pretty powerful ways:

Yesterday I had the pleasure to preach at Central Baptist, my home church. I grew up there, and as I talked about CSC I looked out on a congregation full of friendly faces, people who have been loving our children and supporting the ministry since the very beginning. They have been generous with their money, through good times and bad.

Sitting in the second row were Alberta and Viola, nonagenarian twins whose prayers and spiritual maturity are the foundation of our church. They are generous with their prayers for CSC. Often when I see one of them at church she will ask about some prayer concern that we had listed weeks or months ago. She had been praying for that faithfully and wanted an update. That kind of generosity has sustained the ministry, uplifted individuals and kept our staff from discouragement or error for the entire 31 years that we have been doing this work.

The other night we had a memorial service for Rufa Mae, one of the students in our Children of Hope School who died very suddenly in late October. About 50 of us gathered in Minnesota to celebrate her life. We smiled and we cried and we thanked God for this girl who had touched our lives so significantly. I looked around that room and thank Him for the generosity of love and compassion in that room. Some of the people there had not even met Rufa, but were touched by her anyway, and wanted to offer comfort to those of us who were grieving her loss. We showed a video that night that was made for out banquet in 2008. It showed how Rufa Mae and her brother, who both suffer from brittle bone disease, were carried down the mountain in a basket. That video has touched many lives and has been a great aid in promoting the ministry for the past three years. It was made by a volunteer, Chris Hansen, who has been doing CSC's media presentations for the past 10 years. He is generous with his time and talents, never saying no to a request for help. Like other volunteers, he makes time in his busy schedule for CSC.

As Thanksgiving approaches I am thinking about God's goodness to CSC in a more concentrated way. He has shown this to us through generous people who share our conviction that the situation of homeless children is unacceptable, and use the resources they have, time, talent, as well financial, spiritual and emotional resources to help make a difference for the children that live at CSC.