~Matthew 10:42 And whosoever shall give to drink unto one of these little ones a cup of cold water only in the name of a disciple, verily I say unto you, he shall in no wise lose his reward.

On my latest trip to Egypt something happened that I would like to share with you. This incident is based on my belief that the children of the world are mine and yours.

One morning as I walked to the souk (street where vendors sell things in small shops) I saw a little street person. She was only 4 or 5 years old.

This tiny child was picking up old, half-eaten bread from the dirty street and eating it.

She was not asking people for money, she was foraging for food. When I saw this, I knew I had to do something.

I went over and, in my best half-Arabic and half-English, I tried to speak with her.

The dirty little street child looked up with beautiful brown eyes and stared at me.

She stepped back, frightened, so I took her small hand in mine and walked along the shops asking in Arabic, “Do you speak English?” until I found a man who said, “Yes, why?”

I asked the man to tell the little girl that if she would follow me to the nearest food cart, I would buy her food. He asked me why I would do such a thing for a beggar.

I told him that she had not begged me for anything and she was eating off the street.

He told the little girl what I had said. Then I asked him, “How much should it cost me for the pocket bread with beans in it?” he smiled and explained two pounds, or about 50 cents.

He walked with us to the food cart (I am not sure if he thought I might hurt the girl or what) but once there he told the man at the cart what I was doing and helped me to buy three pocket breads. I gave one to the little one and she ate it as if she had not eaten for days. The other two I put into a bag and handed to her.

She smiled a wondrous smile and ran off. The shopkeeper smiled and went back to his shop.

The next morning on my way to the souk, the little one was waiting. She obviously knew a good thing when she saw it. I laughed and said, “ok, breakfast again?” and repeated the action of the day before, thinking that, for at least 14 days, this little one would have breakfast and maybe lunch, depending on with whom she was sharing the other pocket breads.

The shopkeeper smiled and so did the cart vendor. We seemed to have become fast friends over this little deed.

That night I got to thinking about my little street urchin. She was so dirty and smelled so badly. What else could I do to help her?

The next morning I was off to the souk again but this time I had a bigger plan. As I came around the corner, right on time, there she was, smiling.

I took her hand and went over to the shopkeeper and asked “Where is there water?” He thought I wanted bottled water to drink and I explained, “No, I want a faucet, like where the people wash before prayers.” He looked at me like “now you really are a crazy American!!” and then he showed me a little side alley and there was a water faucet.

“Ok, here goes,” I thought. “What will these people think? But, oh well.” I reached into my bag and pulled out a newspaper and laid out a soap bar, a wash cloth, shampoo and cream rinse (the kind you get in nice little bottles at good hotels).

Now for the hard part: getting her out of her rags without upsetting everyone. The water was cold but it was the best I could do. So off came her clothes and I started soaping her down. She wiggled and squirmed the whole time but I could tell by the smile on her face she loved having someone care for her.

It took two soapings to clean her and all the shampoo to help her smell wonderful. Out of my bag I pulled a towel and dried her off. Then I pulled out a little dress from the bag I was carrying. I had bought the dress for a friend’s child who, I decided, could do with one less dress this year. This little one needed it more. As I lifted the dress out, and she saw it, her face lit up like any child’s at Christmas. It was a little big but she would grow into it.

Then I noticed something: a crowd had gathered. I had been so intent on my clean-up job, I had not noticed.

Now I looked up into the beaming faces of men, women and other children. The shopkeeper asked why I was helping this child and my answer was, “The children of the world are mine and yours. If we don’t care for them, who will?”

I told him this child was as much mine as if I had given birth to her; that we are all responsible for the children, and if one child went to bed hungry then we were not doing our part.”

He turned to the crowd and told them what I had said and they began to nod their heads “yes.” It was as if in this single little act of helping this child, a miracle had happened. I bent and wrapped the old dress and the soap and things into a plastic bag and gave it to the little one before we went off to get her morning breakfast. Things had changed: the food vendor would not take money and gave her her food. We hugged and I went off to do my work.

The next day, I had many business things to do and didn’t go to the souk and then I became ill and was not able to go to for five days. On the sixth day I walked the street looking for her, and boom! There she was in her new dress. Smiling, the shopkeeper came running up and said, “Madame, I thought you must have gone home.” I said no I had been ill and he told me not to worry, they had made sure she had food each day. “But,” he said, “each morning she would set out looking for you for hours. I tried telling her you had gone home and she would say no, and wait.”

I asked the man if I gave him $40.00, would he make sure she was fed each day; that would cover about a year. He said yes.

The day before I left Cairo, I sat down with the little girl and the shopkeeper as translator, and had him tell her I was leaving but that she would be fed each day, and I would try to come back next year. I brought her a bag of fruit bars, soap, shampoo and a sweater much too big but it would keep her warm. I gave her 10 pounds.

Where her parents are , I do not know. I only know that one person can make a difference to a child. If, each trip, I am able to touch a child then I have done Spirit’s work.

The children of the world are mine and yours.

~Atira Hatton, Angels and Miracles … Good-News Letter

~Galatians 6:2  Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.

In a bustling village, somewhere and sometime, there was a town square surrounded by trees where the collectors gathered. These were people who made a living collecting things other peole had discarded. The collectors discovered that once you had enough of various discarded items, they became valuable again. The people of the village had the notion that if something was for sale, it must be worth buying. However strange this may seem, it was what the people thought, and this notion served the collectors well.

One collector had a splendid supply of glass bottles. He attracted attention to them by hanging some from tree and clinking them with sticks to make music. Another collector had a cartload of odd-sized shoes. She often commented how odd in size and shape people’s feet were, so sooner or later her odd assortment of shoes would be distributed to the appropriate feet.

There were pot and pan collectors, stamp and book collectors, golf club and hat collectors, and comic book and sports card collector. All in all, it was quite a collection of collectors.

One day an old man came wandering into the village asking where the collector’s plaza was located. He carried a large pack, but didn’t seem to be burdened by its weight. Eventually, he found the square where the collectors collected, and he established himself off in one corner.

Naturally, the collectors discovered there was a new collector in town, and they eagerly inquired about what he had in the pack. He simply told them there was nothing in it but his lunch and a raincoat in case it rained. “You mean, you don’t have a collection of some kind?” they asked. “Aren’t you a collector?”

“Oh, yes,” he said, “I’m very much a collector. But what I collect does not fit in a pack or a box. I collect people’s care.”

This was a strange idea to the people who heard this, so they asked him to explain. “Well, you see, I discovered long ago that one of the things everybody has too many of and constantly tries to get rid of, are cares, trials, burdens, sorrows, difficult times – all kind of things that weigh them down and make their lives sad. So I offer to collect these cares from the people and they feel better. Isn’t that simple?”

Some of the regular collectors who heard this thought it was a silly belief and possibly one that was dangerous to their honored profession. They even considered reporting him to collector inspector.

The old man didn’t seem to harm anyone, though, so they left him alone. Soon enough, someone asked him how he collected cares, and he replied, “Well, there is probably something in your life that bothers you right now – some care that you have. Just tell me about it and I will add it and I will add it to my collection.”

“But how will that help me?” the inquirer asked. “Can you make the problem go away just because I tell you about it?”

“No,” the care-collector replied, “but you will fell better about it. Try it.”

So the person told the old man about something that was a problem. When the story was finished, the care-collector nodded his head deeply a few times, and then put his hand together as if to scoop up something heavy. He pretended to put it into his pack. “There, I have put it away. How do you feel?” he asked.

The person who had the care collected said, “Why, I do feel better. I think I can handle the problem much better now. It really works!”

Word spread, Soon there was a throng of people who came to give their cares to the care-collector. His spot eventually became the most popular one in the square.

One day a woman came into the village walking very slowly and with considerable difficulty. She seemed so burdened that the villagers took her straight to the care-collector. When he explained to her what kind of collector he was, she began to wail, “Oh, you don’t know how many cares and burdens and wound there are in this world. I have just come from a city where there are more hurt and cares than anywhere else. Everyone suffer and no one has any hope left. The worst part is that the rulers of the city thrive and prosper on the cares of the common people. It is a horrible, desperate place. I just had to leave. It was the only hope I had left,” she concluded.

The care-collector looked very solemn, He stood up and lifted his pack in a gesture that was slower and more painful than anyone had ever seen before. After a long silence, he spoke slowly. “I must go there.”

The villagers and the woman put up a great protest. They didn’t want to lose their care-collector. They were afraid that this city might be too much for him. They begged him to stay.

The old man slipped away in the middle of the night, because he didn’t want his departure to be a burden and a sorrow for the people he had helped.

It was not long thereafter when a weary and burdened young man came into the village. The people knew without asking that he’d come from the city. They helped him as best they could, and when he was feeling better, they asked him if he knew about the old man who had left for the city several weeks ago.

“Know him!” the youth replied. “Why the whole city has been talking about him. Haven’t you heard?”

“Why, no,” the people chorused back, “Tell us what happened.”

“This old man came quietly into the city and nobody noticed him, at first,” the youth recounted. “Then once in a while you could see him talking to people – mostly listening, really. When a person finished talking to him, he bowed his head and did a funny thing with his hands and the person began to feel better.”

“For the first time in a long while,” the young man continued, “people in the city began to feel better and have a bit of hope for their own lives.”

“Yes, we know. He did that here, too,” replied the villagers.

“Well, it didn’t take long for the authorities to notice him. They told him to leave and to stop meddling in other people’s lives. He simply refused,” said the youth from the city.

The young man’s eyes became very sad and he sobbed softly in his throat. He continued, “They put him in jail, at first, but even there he collected the cares of the other prisoners. Finally, the rulers decided that he was a subversive threat to their system of order and control. So they had him excuted.”

The villagers gasped. Some began to cry.

“I am so sorry to bring you this sad news about your friend,” said the youth. “He was my friend also. He really, genuinely cared about me.”

The youth went on. “I feel better for telling you, painful as it is for us all. You know, it is like what he did before he died, his listening and collecting cares.” His voiced trailed off as an idea began to lighten his burden.

“It still works!” he exclaimed. “Collecting cares still works! You can do it for me, and I can do it for you. He only showed us how!”

The young man jumped up, filled with new energy and strength. “I’m going back to the city!”

But what will you do there?” asked several villagers in unison. “You’ll get hurt again. There are too many cares and burdens in that city.”

“Exactly! Exactly!” he continued. “That’s why I’m going. I will become a care-collector!”

~by: Leo Remington, More Sower’s Seeds

~Matthew 25:40 And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.

New York City: It’s a cold day in December. A little boy about 10-year-old was standing before a shoe store on Broadway, barefooted, peering through the window, and shivering with cold. A lady approached the boy and said, “My little fellow, why are you looking so earnestly in that window?”

“I was asking God to give me a pair of shoes,” was the boy’s reply.

The lady took him by the hand and went into the store, and asked the clerk to get a half dozen pairs of socks for the boy. She then asked if he could give her a basin of water and a towel. He quickly brought them to her. She took the little fellow to the back part of the store and, removing her gloves, knelt down, washed his little feet, and dried them with a towel.

By this time the clerk had returned with the socks. Placing a pair upon the boy’s feet, she then purchased him a pair of shoes, and tying up the remaining pairs of socks, gave them to him. She patted him on the head and said, “No doubt, my little fellow, you feel more comfortable now?”

As she turned to go, the astonished lad caught her by the hand, and looking up in her face, with tears in his eyes, answered the question with these words: “Are you God’s wife?”

~Author Unknown

~Hebrews 13:2 Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.

In September 1960, I woke up one morning with six hungry babies and just 75 cents in my pocket. Their father was gone. The boys ranged from three months to seven years; their sister was two.

Their Dad had never been much more than a presence they feared. Whenever they heard his tires crunch on the gravel driveway they would scramble to hide under their beds. He did manage to leave 15 dollars a week to buy groceries. Now that he had decided to leave, there would be no more beatings, but no food either. If there was a welfare system in effect in southern Indiana at that time, I certainly knew nothing about it.

I scrubbed the kids until they looked brand new and then put on my best homemade dress. I loaded them into the rusty old 51 Chevy and drove off to find a job. The seven of us went to every factory, store and restaurant in our small town. No luck. The kids stayed, crammed into the car and tried to be quiet while I tried to convince whomever would listen that I was willing to learn or do anything. I had to have a job. Still no luck.

The last place we went to, just a few miles out of town, was an old Root Beer Barrel drive-in that had been converted to a truck stop. It was called the Big Wheel. An old lady named Granny owned the place and she peeked out of the window from time to time at all those kids. She needed someone on the graveyard shift, 11 at night until seven in the morning. She paid 65 cents an hour and I could start that night.

I raced home and called the teenager down the street that baby-sat for people. I bargained with her to come and sleep on my sofa for a dollar a night. She could arrive with her pajamas on and the kids would already be asleep. This seemed like a good arrangement to her, so we made a deal. That night when the little ones and I knelt to say our prayers we all thanked God for finding Mommy a job. And so I started at the Big Wheel.

When I got home in the mornings I woke the baby-sitter up and sent her home with one dollar of my tip money – fully half of what I averaged every night. As the weeks went by, heating bills added another strain to my meager wage. The tires on the old Chevy had the consistency of penny balloons and began to leak. I had to fill them with air on the way to work and again every morning before I could go home. One bleak fall morning, I dragged myself to the car to go home and found four tires in the back seat. New tires! There was no note, no nothing, just those beautiful brand new tires. Had angels taken up residence in Indiana? I wondered. I made a deal with the owner of the local service station. In exchange for his mounting the new tires, I would clean up his office. I remember it took me a lot longer to scrub his floor than it did for him to do the tires.

I was now working six nights instead of five and it still wasn’t enough. Christmas was coming and I knew there would be no money for toys for the kids. I found a can of red paint and started repairing and painting some old toys. Then I hid them in the basement so there would be something for Santa to deliver on Christmas morning. Clothes were a worry too. I was sewing patches on top of patches on the boys pants and soon they would be too far gone to repair.

On Christmas Eve the usual customers were drinking coffee in the Big Wheel. These were the truckers, Les, Frank, and Jim, and a state trooper named Joe. A few musicians were hanging around after a gig at the Legion and were dropping nickels in the pinball machine. The regulars all just sat around and talked through the wee hours of the morning and then left to get home before the sun came up. When it was time for me to go home at seven o’clock on Christmas morning I hurried to the car. I was hoping the kids wouldn’t wake up before I managed to get home and get the presents from the basement and place them under the tree. (We had cut down a small cedar tree by the side of the road down by the dump.)

It was still dark and I couldn’t see much, but there appeared to be some dark shadows in the car – or was that just a trick of the night? Something certainly looked different, but it was hard to tell what. When I reached the car I peered warily into one of the side windows. Then my jaw dropped in amazement. My old battered Chevy was full to the top with boxes of all shapes and sizes. I quickly opened the driver’s side door, scrambled inside and kneeled in the front facing the back seat. Reaching back, I pulled off the lid of the top box. Inside was a whole case of little blue jeans, sizes 2-10! I looked inside another box: It was full of shirts to go with the jeans. Then I peeked inside some of the other boxes: There were candy and nuts and bananas and bags of groceries. There was an enormous ham for baking, and canned vegetables and potatoes. There was pudding and Jell-O and cookies, pie filling and flour. There was a whole bag of laundry supplies and cleaning items. And there were five toy trucks and one beautiful little doll. As I drove back through empty streets as the sun slowly rose on the most amazing Christmas Day of my life, I was sobbing with gratitude. And I will never forget the joy on the fac es of my little ones that precious morning.

Yes, there were angels in Indiana that long-ago December.

And they all hung out at the Big Wheel truck stop.

~Author Unknown

What a beautiful depiction of the impact one person can have on the world. One does not have to be a politician, great musician or philosopher to impact the world.

In the 1930s a young traveler was exploring the French Alps. He came upon a vast stretch of barren land. It was desolate. It was forbidding. It was ugly. It was the kind of place you hurry away from.

Then, suddenly, the young traveler stopped dead in his tracks. In the middle of this vast wasteland was a bent-over old man. On his back was a sack of acorns. In his hand was a four-foot length of iron pipe.

The man was using the iron pope to punch holes in the ground. Then from the sack he would take an acorn and put it in the hole. Later the old man the traveler, “I’ve planted over 100,000 acorns. Perhaps only a tenth of them will grow.” The old man’s wife and son had died, and this was how he chose to spend his final years. “I want to do something useful,” he said.

Twenty-five years later the now-not-as-young traveler returned to the same desolate area. What he saw amazed him. He could not believe his own eyes. The land was covered with a beautiful forest two miles wide and five miles long. Birds were singing, animals were playing, and wild flowers perfumed the air.

The traveler stood there recalling the desolation that once was; a beautiful oak forest stood there now – all because someone cared.

by: Brian Cavanaugh, T.O.R., The Sower’s Seeds

~Matthew 5:16 Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.

our good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.