MERCY MINISTRY MOMENT
- supplies the food for over 50,000 Marylanders each week who otherwise would go hungry or not eat enough, including families with children, the elderly, the homeless, the homebound, low-income workers, the recently unemployed, and people with AIDS and other health problems
- Virtual Experience of Hunger
- Jennifer Hernandez is a 29-year old single mother who lives with her 5-year-old daughter and 2-year old son in Park Heights. She has earned an associates degree but she cannot find full-time work. She has been struggling to make ends meet since her husband left a year ago. She works nights at a hospital earning $360 a month. After taxes Jennifer's monthly income is $310. She also receives $340 a month from Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF). You saw her riding the MTA bus yesterday with her children.
- Bryan Jenkins is age 38. He was recently laid-off at a high profile technology company and has applied for unemployment. His wife Katie works as a substitute teacher earning $1460 a month but $300 goes to taxes. They have two children in elementary school. The car payment is $350 and the mortgage on the house is $700. His savings is depleted and he is struggling to make ends meet. Bryan returned the $5 bill you dropped at the restaurant last Wednesday.
- Ways to take action:
- donate money
- donate time
- conduct food drives
- donate food
WHO IS MY NEIGHBOR?
- Neighbors
- Family
- Church
- Friends
- Strangers
- Enemies - Romans 12: 17-21
- Keller
- "Who are we to love in word and deed? The answer is, anyone you find in need, anyone you find in the road."
- "anyone at all - relative, friend, acquaintance, stranger, or enemy - whose need we see. Not all men are my brothers, but everyman is my neighbor."
- "Our job is nothing less than seeking out and meeting their basic human needs."
- Culture
- byFaith Magazine - Witness to the Power of God's Word - Kathleen Nielson, Issue Number 18, December 2007
Mary and Nancy both have found strength in Jesus Christ and in the Scriptures, and that, they say, is what they have to share. The women to whom they minister do not have the time or luxury to focus on their sufferings and their feelings; they are simply trying to survive. What’s interesting, we learn, is that depression and suicide are almost unheard of in Kibera. Introspection and self-analysis have not taken over, as in so many parts of America. Perhaps the urgency of outward need opens avenues for the gospel message to come in. Perhaps the over-fulfillment of Americans’ outward need has closed off those avenues and turned us inward, into unfruitful interior journeys and self-consumed, self-consuming darkness. That is a denser darkness than the darkness of an unlit hut.
WHAT IS MY RESPONSIBILITY TO THE COVENANT FAMILY?
Deuteronomy 15: 4-7
Matthew Henry
"Grudge not a kindness to thy brother; distrust not the providence of God. What thou doest, do freely"Matthew 25: 31 - 40
Matthew Henry
"Good works done for God's sake, through Jesus Christ, are here noticed as marking the character of believers made holy by the Spirit of Christ, and as the effects of grace bestowed on those who do them"1 Timothy 5: 3 - 8
Calvin
"for there is no piety towards God, when a person can thus lay aside the feelings of humanity. Would faith, which makes us the sons of God, render us worse than brute beasts? Such inhumanity, therefore, is open contempt of God, and denying of the faith."Calvin, "This is the same as though he had said, that we do not attain salvation by a frigid and bare knowledge of God, which all confess to be most true; for salvation comes to us by faith for this reason, because it joins us to God. And this comes not in any other way than by being united to the body of Christ, so that, living through his Spirit, we are also governed by him. There is no such thing as this in the dead image of faith."
Calvin, "This similitude is intended to excite us to that kind of communication which ought to be maintained among the members of one family. There are duties which we owe to all men arising out of a common nature; but the tie of a more sacred relationship, established by God himself, binds us to believers."
WHAT IS MY RESPONSIBILITY TO THE WORLD?
Exodus 22:21
John Wesley, "Those that have themselves been in poverty and distress, if Providence enrich and enlarge them, ought to shew a particular tenderness towards those that are now in such circumstances as they were in formerly, now doing to them as they then wished to be done by."Leviticus 23:22
John Wesley, "our devotion to God is little esteemed by him if it be not accompanied with acts of charity to men."Matthew 25: 31 - 40
Matthew Henry, "The wicked and godly here dwell together, in the same cities, churches, families, and are not always to be known the one from the other"Luke 10: 25-37
Matthew Henry, "It is the duty of us all , in our places, and according to our ability, to succour, help, and relieve all that are in distress and necessity."Galatians 6: 2-10
Matthew Henry, "We should take care to do good in our life-time, and make this the business of our lives. Especially when fresh occasions offer, and as far as our power reaches."
CHURCH AND STATE
- Keller
- "the work of mercy is given by God more primarily to the church and the family than to the state."
- "the closer the covenantal connection, the greater the responsibility for mercy."
- Rev. Thomas Chalmers - Scotland - early 1800's
"At one point, his ministry was criticized as being in competition with the government welfare system. Chalmers readily agreed! He went on to say that the church could do what the government could not He saw that it could deal with the moral and spiritual roots of poverty." - PCUSA General Assembly 1892
"The municipal overseer can never be a substitute for the deacon. The Church must prove herself the friend of the workingman. She can and should answer and conquer the communist by the deacon."
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