Sunday, 27 December 2009

• Serving Others: Making Room at the Inn

  The story of the birth of Christ has been shared year after year repeating the statement...."there was no room at the inn".  I have spent several days thinking deeply about that and how it affects my life in today's culture.  How can we make room in our lives representing Jesus -- how can we truly be the church, the body of Christ? 
  

  This year our church had a vision to honor our military with a special Military Christmas Service and Dinner.  I know it was a God Idea!  When I set out to bring together the process of who to contact, who will speak etc., I had so many loose ends and nothing seemed to come together.  I am not a last minute person!  This was so frustrating to me, but I went with the flow. 
  

  To make a long story short, we met with the Family Readiness Group and took on the challenge of planning a dinner for over 150 people -- the military and their families from all over our state.  Restaurants donated trays of food, Grocery Stores donated gift cards to purchase additional food items needed to complete the dinner.  Overall, about 15 community minded business owners donated resources for us to have a complete dinner with appetizers and dessert.  One of our own, who is a chef, cooked and put together a team to make a menu to be proud of while others served, cleaned and decorated their facility. 
  

  The Lord showed me through this that we had to make room -- in our schedules, with our resources, in our lives.  Many of the military were deployed overseas so their family came without them.  Our people tried to take the time to speak with them and share in their thoughts of Christmas while their family member was serving our country.  Isn't this what Christmas is all about?  In addition, we were able to raise over $5,000.00 with the help of other community groups. This was given to the Family Readiness Group to cover their needs during the year.  For example, just to purchase phone cards for the 150 military overseas out of our Armory would cost about $3,000.00!

  I don't know why we didn't do this before!  Unfortunately, our Military Christmas Service was "snowed out" this past week so we didn't get to complete our vision yet, but we are communicating with them on the next available event with which we can help.  When they return in April, we are joining together with a celebration parade to thank them for serving.  There will always be a need for room -- room for people; they are waiting for you.

  Did you make room for others at Christmas?  How will you be making room to serve in your future? 

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