It's Saturday morning and I am at the local shopping centre trying to help people in my community who are struggling and who need food, clothing and a lot of support.
I hear you saying 'What can he do? The problem is so big. He wouldn't know where to begin!' But there is something that you and I can do.
Let me tell you what happened. Three or four from our local church had an idea. We decided to collect two cans of food from every person who worships regularly on a Sunday and then to deliver the offering to Lutheran Community Care to help the people who need it the most.
Well that sounds easy enough, doesn't it? Our church is not very big in numbers, but when our can drive had finished we had collected 120 cans. This was a pretty good effort. When the 120 cans were packed into 3 or 4 cartons, it just didn't seem like enough.
The story continues - Someone suggested we take the pile of cans to the local supermarket and ask the shoppers to add to the stack. Laughingly, we joked. 'What can we do? We don't know where to begin?' But we decided to give it a try. First we approached the manager of the supermarket and once approval was gained we set up one Saturday morning. It wasn't long before things began to happen.
This is the point at which the Pennies from Heaven (or Cans from Heaven) started to take shape. We set up a modest display which included a few signs explaining that we were collecting cans in order to feed the poor. Shoppers were handed an explanatory note inviting them to buy just one extra can of food and to add it to the pile after they had been through the checkout.
Some people avoided us, but we were overwhelmed by the generosity of so many. Some of those that gave appeared to need our help, yet they gladly placed their one can on the every growing pyramid.
Are you waiting to hear the result?
Pennies from heaven 1
It took 3 ½ trailer loads to deliver the food, but there's more!
Pennies from Heaven 2
Two people came to church, for the first time, on the following Sunday. They had seen the display and had taken home a leaflet on 'All about Jesus'. The campaign 'All about Jesus' had just started on TV.
We thought that we had set out to feed and clothe the poor, but we had also ended up enriched and encouraged by each other. We had food for life and had witnessed to our community without even knowing it. Not bad for 3 hours' activity on a Saturday morning.
'What can I do? The problems are so big. I wouldn't know where to begin!'
That thought and fear is long gone and we can't wait to experience the blessings of hearing those pennies (cans) falling around us as we happily continue to do the Lord's work.
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Can you and each individual church family put one can aside each week for Lutheran Community Care's Winter Appeal and for those times when the shelves get low on food through increased demand?