by Gary Priour

A lot of support comes financially from across the state to keep this program going. Miraculously, for twenty years, the support has come at just the right time, and often from sources who had no way of knowing all the circumstances of our needs. Since we have never had a fund-raising department (though we're thinking of getting one as we keep growing), I can only attribute this meeting of needs to the presence of a knowing and loving God caring for this ministry and the children in its care through the kindness and generosity of His people.

During this past year, while we have been brought face to face with the most difficult and challenging times of our ministry, I have been made keenly aware of another kind of divine intervention — the sending of special messengers of encouragement, with assurance and affirmation that God’s view and timing exist at some coordinate outside our own, one that allows Him to be both removed from the excruciating stress of crises in human life and, at the same time, immediately present. The challenge to find Him when walls of anger and fear are up around us is made easier by these emissaries who reflect the loving countenance of Christ as they pass through the scene.

It is a distinctive feature of Christianity vis-a-vis other religions that its disciples are commissioned to go out into the world and bring the message of love and redemption to the wounded and the lost. This makes the Christian vulnerable to "slings and arrows" more than if he were a convert to one of the faiths that teaches a one-way withdrawal plan without the requirement to make deposits back into the account called "loving one another."

This accountability to the Great Commission for discipleship in the world also causes the Christian in crisis to discover that he is not alone, that the "body of Christ" comes to meet inner as well as outer needs, and sends agents of healing and support just like a body responds through the blood to real physical wounds and illnesses. There have always been "angels among us", but the discovery of what can happen when a group of Christians take their commission literally and begin to pray for one another and send out tangible signals of the love of Christ as it lives through them — Jesus promised that He would infuse himself into us — that we might learn our part in the coordinated movement of one body serving Christ in each other and in the world. It’s an exciting team to be on, and every position counts.