Remembering Dec. 15th, 2007 - Engage Community Church of Carlisle, PA

We seek to bless the greater Carlisle area.

//Remembering Dec. 15th, 2007

On December 6th from 8:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m Engage Community Church is partnering with New Life Community Church to winterize vehicles for single moms. We need your time. We need you to donate money. You need to meet these tired, anxious parents who are doing their best. Read more to find out why…

It was a year ago next month. We were blasted by the shrill early December cold as groups of us stood huddled like warriors on the 30 yard line in the parking lot of Project Share. We danced around trying to stay warm as we waited for the vehicles to arrive. We were ready. We stood armed with numb fingers clasping cold wrenches, stiff hoses, and gallons of motor oil.

Last year at this time a group of friends from church decided to reach out to tired, struggling single parents in our area. In the days and weeks prior we put up posters, handed out vouchers, and invited as many single parents as we could to come take advantage of an opportunity to get their cars prepared for the rough winter months. The lifeline for single parents is their vehicles. If their vehicles aren’t safe or running properly they can’t get to work. If struggling single parents can’t get to work they could lose their jobs. If they lose their jobs they could lose their home or apartment. If they lose their home or apartment they could could lose their children. You get the point. If these people don’t have safe, maintained vehicles it could unleash a chain reaction that has no end…

The cars came driving in one after another. Cars were parked side by side, each one reflecting the hard working, tired lives of its owner. The long line of cars was a whose who of car maintenance no no’s. There were bald tires, blasting mufflers, broken wipers, black gooey oil, chipped faded paint, and scabbed over rust spots. I will never forget the helpless youthfulness of one mom in particular. We will call her Tara. It was towards the end of the day and we were ticking off the last task on her vehicle. With check sheet in hand, I thanked Tara for coming and told her the bad news. “Miss, your tires are bald. I mean bald. You need to get new tires as soon as possible,” I said. Tara looked at me with a helpless stare. She tried to muster a grateful thank you. “Um, thank,” was all that she could say before her eyes began brimming over with tears. As her tears spilled over onto her dark cheeks she quivered, “I don’t have it. I can’t do it. How am I going to pay for tires?”

I found out that this young mom works two jobs, raises her children, and tries her best to be a descent hard-working person.

We believe in a God who created humanity in order to love us. I know what you might be thinking. Well, if God created us to love us then why this or why that? If God is so loving why doesn’t he do a better job of taking care of people if we are so valuable to him? Great questions. I don’t have answers. All I know is God came to us in self-giving love personified in Jesus. He suffered with us. He identified with our struggle, our pain, our greatest fears. Now we get to do that for people like Tara. Daily we pass single parents on the road. We watch them load their kids up in the grocery cart at Giant. We sense their tired anxieties echoed in the frustrated outbursts at their children. We see “Tara” everywhere we go. Here is our chance to be the change we want to see. As one modern day prophet of love put it, “It is not how much we do, but how much love we put in the doing.” Most of us will never go to the slums of Calcutta, but right under our noses here in Carlisle, PA the needs of the human heart are just the same.

If you would like to volunteer or financially donate to this need, please visit our web site and send us an email from the “contact us” form. Or call 701-9557. Click here to see pictures from last year.

Click Here to post a comment.

Engage Community Church