journeys-page

My mother was diagnosed with lung cancer a week after I turned 17. Fifteen weeks later, she was gone. She died on a Tuesday, her funeral was on a Friday, and my twin sister and I started our senior year in high school the following Monday. The day I finished High School was the day I moved out of my family home, with very few personal belongings. I rented a room in the home of a family I worked for and had been grown increasingly close to. Within three months of that, my father sold the family house, and had an auction and sold everything in it. When I first moved in with the family that eventually became my “adoptive” family, I only planned to spend the summer with them before starting college in the fall. Plans changed and I ended up staying with them for a little over a year before proceeding to college. While living with this family, I became one of them and learned a completely new way of life. This family helped me in many, many ways; emotionally, spiritually, socially, and financially. They never asked for anything in return. I often told them that I would never be able to pay them back for all that they did for me. Their response was that the best way to pay them back would be to help others in time of need if/when I was ever in the position to do so. Fast forward to the present: To this day, I do not feel that I can adequately do enough for others to even begin to repay my “adoptive” family for all that they have done for me. Nevertheless, I am still trying. In doing so, I constantly keep the message from Matthew 6:1-4 in the back of my mind: Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven. 2“So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others. Truly, I tell you, they have received their reward in full. 3But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, 4so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.” I hear the messages that always reinforce the concept of loving, accepting, and helping others in need from Pastors Kelly, Kalaba, and Geoffrey in their weekly sermons. TUMC does many good things in our community, and often it becomes newsworthy. However, I want to take a moment to thank each and every one of you who does things for others that does not make the news. I would like to believe that my church family helps others in more ways that go unrecognized than in the ways that make the news. I also believe that when someone receives help and mentions that they would like to “repay” it in some form, telling them that the best way they can “repay” it is to help others in need if/when they have the opportunity to do so becomes one of the most effective forms of ministry that exists. The benefits of this type of ministry are unmeasurable in earthly terms. We will never know how many people are impacted. We do not need to know. God knows. Grace and Peace, Deb Larsen