Sending Smiles

 Every e-mail I send out from my gmail account contains the Scripture reference Galatians 6:9 in the footer.  It says, "Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up."  I think the COVID-19 pandemic has left a lot of us weary, run down, and just plain exhausted.  Allow me to encourage you today to not give up doing good.

Our youth group makes a meal for other teens in our community who happen to be homeless six times a year.  This time I decided to reach out to our pastor's neighborhood to see if any of them would be willing to help donate the ingredients needed to make the meal we will be putting together this upcoming Friday.  Our pastor's son (who is also a member of our youth group) and I went around door to door passing out flyers and talking to his roughly forty-five neighbors.  Most of the people we talked to were pleasant and seemed like they wanted to help.  This past week we received a handful of phone calls from those neighbors saying they had food they would like to donate!  One neighbor even said "This is so cool!"

Sometimes people need to see that there are people, especially teenagers, who are still doing good in this world.  We packed up the church van full of teens and went to this neighborhood full of wonderful people and collected the food that had been donated.  This Friday we will assemble the meal, cook it, and deliver it to Coffee Oasis, a local ministry that serves homeless teens in our community.

I don't know if these neighbors have a church affiliation, or even a relationship with Jesus.  But I do know we planted seeds of hope, and delivered smiles to people's faces.  Their hearts were probably even filled with joy knowing they were helping someone else out.  Who knows?  Maybe one of them might even show up at our church wanting to find out more about the God who these servant teens know.  But even if no one does, we can't give up doing the good that God wants us to do.  God promises that there is a harvest at the proper time.  So in this season of despair, which may have left you weary, don't become weary in doing good.