Preparing for Mercy Work

Now in these days when the disciples were increasing in number, a complaint by the Hellenists arose against the Hebrews because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution. And the twelve summoned the full number of the disciples and said, “It is not right that we should give up preaching the word of God to serve tables. Therefore, brothers, pick out from among you seven men of good repute, full of the Spirit and of wisdom, whom we will appoint to this duty. But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word.” (Acts 6:1-4, ESV)

Word and Sacrament ministry is the heart of the work of the Church–it provides the sustenance that creates and sustains the faith.  Christ’s died on the cross for your sins.  His life provides the means that give us life and it is our Holy Mother, the Church, to whom Christ’s gives this most precious gift to distribute without any cost.  This drives us every Lord’s Day to receive his most precious gifts. To hear his Word preached into our ears that our hearts, made new by God in Holy Baptism, desperately clings to.  We long to be fed his Holy Supper and hear His words of Absolution every week.

While our Lord provides these gifts, he also recognizes that we have needs of this body and life.  He also tells us not to be anxious, “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat, nor about your body, what you will put on. For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing. Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds! And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? If then you are not able to do as small a thing as that, why are you anxious about the rest?” (Luke 12:22-26, ESV)

Our Lord gives us the opportunity to care for the least.  And there are so many things that need to occur to make that happen.  We don’t often talk about all that needs to happen behind the scenes, all the work that occurs to make the Church run smoothly.  There is cleaning that must be done, grounds must be up-kept, bills that need to be paid and today there were diapers that needed to be wrapped. Hope Lutheran Church’s Family Life Pantry served nearly 100 families each month.  That’s near 6000 diapers alone!

Every child receives 60 diapers or 48 pull-ups and well, those aren’t conveniently put together into bundles by themselves.  Volunteers come together to do that.  Today we gathered together to do that work.  It is a joy to watch so many hands come together to make that work happen quickly and efficiently.

In Acts 6, quoted above, the Church recognized there was a problem.  The Apostles couldn’t take care of the widowed and the orphans as well as preach and teach, so they had the men of the church gather together and select from among themselves, men of good repute to lead the Church in this important task of caring for the disciples.  Seven were initially chosen from the task and if you try to look up who these men are in the Bible, outside of Stephen and Philip, it is silent.  Tradition is even quite hazy as to what happened to most of them.  And that’s okay.

Likewise the members of Hope Lutheran Church and our friends who come together to hep us will likely not be remember in 100 years, let alone in 2000 years, and for them, that’s okay too.  We don’t come together to be recognized and applauded.  Sometimes we even forget to say thank you for your service, but again, they are not there to be thanked.  They are there to give thanks to the Lord for all His benefits to them and to show the love of God, given to them in mercy, by serving in acts of mercy to those in need.

These pictures are just a sampling of the mercy work that is done.

And we can always use your support too.  If you’d like to contribute to this work, we invite you to give to our Family’s Life Pantry’s paypal account. Every penny we receive goes to serving the infants and toddlers that we support.  You can also support this work by being a sponsor of our upcoming Oktoberfest Classic on October 2, a golf scramble tournament at Eagle Mountain that will benefit this work too.  Click here to learn more about our first annual fundraiser for this work of mercy.