Engage Community Church

Last Saturday we braved the 14 degree numbing cold to gather at Project Share for our 2nd annual Car Winterization for single parents.  I want to thank so many of you for your prayers, participation, and help for this important project.  Last year we helped 30 families to have safe vehicles for the treachery of winter driving in PA. This year through the efforts of New Life Community (our parent Church) we doubled the impact over last year! We winterized over 60 vehicles! In addition, we were able to raise $1,100 so we could give single parents gift certificates to local garages for tires, further maintenence, and other pressing mechanical needs.  I had a conversation with Norma.  Norma is a single mom with 5 kids. She works two jobs and her family lives with her father in the area.  With pride in her heart and tears in her eyes Norma told me about her daughter.  Norma’s daughter is a senior this year at a local high school.  At one point in the conversation Norma paused, looked me square in the eyes and with a mother’s pride told me how her daughter has just received a scholarship to college.  Norma’s daughter will be the first person in her family to attend college. All I could do is smile and feel the great transfer of pride from her heart to mine.

Norma’s car needed more repairs than we could provide on Sat.  But we were able to give her a gift certificate so she could repair her windshield washer fluid pump. She has been driving around without the ability to clear her windshield on the snowy days she has to drive to work.

As the day drew to a close I thought to myself, “This isn’t much, we could do more, but this is what Christmas is about.”  Christmas is about God coming to be one of us.  God putting on coveralls, grabbing a wrench, braving the cold so he can meet us right in the middle of our greatest needs.  Obviously, the coming of Christ is so much more, but Christ’s entrance into humanity means that nothing is insigificant.  Every part of normal life matters when our Creator joins us in the ordinaries of everyday life under the hood.