When Jesus was asked “What is the greatest commandment?” he responded with “Love.”
This morning my wife and I met several friends of ours from church in Downtown Dallas. We set out on a mission that was thought of and coordinated by Bob Bolton and his wife Ashley to give to others. In an email to his friends Bob and his wife were convicted about their need to live out the real meaning for this season simply for themselves but also so their kids can begin to see that it’s not about “us”. Here is an excerpt from his email:
“… plan is to wake up Christmas Eve morning and head downtown to distribute what we hope will be blessings to the homeless that we meet. We thought making coffee would be easy and that probably gift cards to restaurants located downtown (McDonalds, etc) might be the easiest thing to do for the first time down there. We’d also love to load up a wagon with gloves, blankets, jackets, hats, etc and be able to hand these out if the people we meet need them….”
Well, guess what? A simple email and his story convicted many of us to join him and his family. There were many who he contacted that wanted to participate, but were going to be out of town for Christmas. However, those families contributed where they could, by providing us with clothing, blankets, and other donations.
Each envelope had a piece of scripture on them. This one reads: “Mark 12:30-31 – Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no commandment greater than this.”. The card inside also had a hand written message of encouragement, and a gift card ranging from $5 to $25. We handed these out to each person we came in contact with.
We all met in a parking lot in downtown Dallas and started unloading our vehicles and formulating our action plan. We actually had more to give away than our wagons could hold!
This is my daughter Taryn, who was among several other children braving the cold weather for this special occasion.
As you can see we didn’t even make it out of the parking lot, before we were approached by several downtown residents. We provided them with food, a hot cup of coffee and the ability to pick from whatever we had that they could use, clothes, sleeping bags, jackets…
We made it about a mile north and found several in need around the public library which was about a block from the “soup kitchen”.
It wasn’t long before the rain began and our kids were getting cold, but we pressed on and ended up in one of the most populated areas in Dallas. Here we gave out the remaining articles of clothing and food.
You can see by the smiles on their faces that they were lifted up today.
God allowed our paths to cross and it wasn’t us blessing them as much as us being blessed by this experience and showing our kids the true meaning of Christmas.
Between our families we handed out over $500 in gift cards, a trunk-load of food, 4 wagons-full of clothing, and over 50 cups of coffee and cards of encouragement! What an awesome way to spend Christmas Eve morning!
The Bolton’s – The Dickinson’s – The Chavez’s – The Brzozowski’s – The Nanney’s – The Kessler’s – The Cathman’s
This is beautiful. You can see Jesus in every face!
So awesome! This looked like an amazing experience!
Man I’m proud of you guys.