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01-01-11
THE HIGH-WAY TO HEAVEN
Dear brothers and sisters, God bless you. Thank you, thank you, thank you
for the delightful “banner year” that your prayers and financial donations
have successfully provided for thousands upon thousands of impoverished,
depressed, and exceedingly needy men, women, and little children struggling
to barely survive in Pinellas County. God bless you. Indeed, 2010 was a
banner year for our Rescue Mission and records were broken, although I must
admit that I did get a bit more than slightly nervous, downright jumpy one
might say, after Thanksgiving Day this November when our monthly donations
attained a new low, but you pulled us out of it for a wonderful blessed
Christmas with a new record high in received donations for the month of
December (a 22 year record high), thereby manifesting your sacrificial
giving (godly love) in the midst of the clearly perceptible threat of
worldwide and personal financial duress (I know you are having a hard time,
we are too). Thank you. By your giving (by your fruits) I discern that I am,
gratefully and humbly, speaking to true believing Christians, eternal
brothers and sisters sharing in the love of Christ every one. God bless you.
J
Well, let us look at some of the more noteworthy of our accomplishments for
the year 2010. Our dedicated volunteers, staff, and Board of Directors
ministered directly and indirectly to untold thousands of persons, of which
427 men, women, and children willingly prayed and asked Jesus Christ to come
into and live in their hearts and be their Lord and Savior. As born-again
children of God, these persons have commenced to think differently about
their lives, and begun to allow God to modify their desires and behavior
patterns to conform to His own thoughts, as they are so declared in the
Bible, which is His sincere, pure and perfect love letter to all mankind.
Of course I dearly love Father God’s whole love letter because it quite
definitely transformed and is continuing to transform my own life from one
of despondent misery into exceeding great joy, precept upon precept, line
upon line, here a little, and there a little, but two verses in particular
stand out and command my attention because they have a very special purpose,
hidden from most, found by few, they are a warm golden light that
illuminates a softly shining highway from earth to Heaven. J If I may…
(Rom 10:9,10) That if thou shalt confess [Gk: assent, acknowledge] with thy
mouth [i.e., out loud (and unashamedly)] the Lord [Gk: supreme in authority]
Jesus, and shalt believe [Gk: have faith, trust] in thine heart that God
hath raised him from the dead [hath resurrected him], thou shalt be saved
[imputed for righteousness, born-again]. For with the heart man believeth
unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.
Amen
In cooperation with your partnership and help, and sustained on a remarkably
modest budget, our Rescue Mission freely distributed $1,344,647 (one million
three hundred forty-four thousand six hundred and forty-seven dollars) worth
of food amounting to approximately 500,000 meals (five hund… you get the
idea J ). A portion of those meals went to the 10,501 poor families living
in Pinellas County who are registered with us to receive a free box of
groceries. Registration is easy; you just have to have a name. And a goodly
portion of those meals were distributed to the 171 other non-profit
organizations in Pinellas County that receive free foodstuffs from our
Rescue Mission. Might I also mention, in relation to the latter food
distributions, that our hard-working truck drivers are traveling a combined
average of over 62,000 miles per year (spending over $20,000 in gas),
exclusively in Pinellas County.
However, a notable decrease in our daily provision has occurred in the bag
lunch program. Please allow me to explain. Every work-day morning, members
of our Rescue Mission are on the road by 5:00am in one of our trucks with
the intent to give away free bag lunches (free meals) to our worst-case down
and out citizens who are desperately seeking a labor job for one day at
various day-labor business locations throughout the county. In this
instance, it is the faltering economy that is the culprit. By way of
example, in December of 2007 (we keep excellent records), we delivered 6,383
bag lunches to a bunch of exceedingly grateful, but miserably poor, men and
women. In December of 2010 (last month), we delivered 1,882 bag lunches to a
much smaller number of highly depressed penniless virtually apathetic
recipients. What happened in those three years? As a causative indicator, we
might further note that during the month of this December alone, three more
day-labor businesses in Pinellas County closed their doors and went out of
business. Why? Because there are no jobs available for these day-labor
businesses to send their clients to for work, not even for one day’s work.
Obvious conclusions: established businesses are not expanding but treading
water or decreasing, and new businesses are not beginning at all, period.
But, when viewed as an economic indicator, what will the effect of the
drastic decrease in our bag lunch program mean to you personally? Well, the
number of homeless, penniless, hungry persons roaming the streets of your
town and mine is dramatically increasing every day. That alone should give
you pause for thought. But who are these people? They are persons just like
you and I who, through little fault of their own, have lost their jobs,
their houses, their families, and their cars, pretty much in that order, and
they are walking our streets depressed, hungry, and becoming angrier every
day.
Aside from the growing personal danger to you and your family implicit in
that circumstance, we might ask (rather urgently) what solution can we apply
to remedy this increasingly dangerous situation. Well, the governments of
the Federal, State, County, and City authorities are emphasizing housing the
homeless, and one may plausibly foresee that eventually the Federal
government will assume more rigid control over “a dangerous situation,” and
step in under some Socialistic helps guise, and take over all the presently
vacant houses and buildings; then in turn minimally “rent” those houses and
buildings back to the needy population in exchange, perhaps, for their
indentured service.
However, in reality, food is the primary consideration of life and housing
is secondary. People don’t need housing to live, they need food to live, and
many will go to great lengths to live. Therein lies the danger, and in
response to this looming threat, our government, ostensibly, of the people,
by the people, and for the people, should be preparing for and emphasizing
the feeding of needy people now rather than talking about housing, because
when and if this great country runs out of food, or prices the general
population out of the food market through gross food price inflation, we
will all be in enormous trouble. Of course, there is usually more than one
way to achieve an objective, and there is certainly a well-known cadre of
persons in high government authority who believe in using and fostering an
existing crisis in order to achieve an unrelated goal. These persons are in
a position to clearly see the food crisis coming and might well prefer to
wait for food to become unavailable, or available but unattainable first, so
that they can use that horrible happenstance as a righteous justification
for stepping into “a dangerous situation,” nationalizing all vacant housing,
moving the needy population into the those houses and buildings and
providing food for them there, in exchange, perhaps, for their indentured
servitude. That’s what happened historically (and prophetically) during
Joseph’s reign as Prime Minister in Egypt. (Gen 47:13-25). Bleak future
that.
Nevertheless, happy days for us, dear brothers and sisters, because we are
believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, each one saved, born-again, imputed for
righteousness, children of Father God; promised by God to be spared the
sorrows of the latter day worldly tribulations (Gen 45:10; Rev 12:5,6;14),
having found that golden pathway, a ladder of light leading directly upward
into the waiting bosom of Father God. God bless you.
Sincerely,
Rev. Lionel J
(Gen 28:12) And he [Jacob] dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth,
and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending
and descending on it.
(John 1:51) And he [Jesus] saith unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto you,
Hereafter ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and
descending upon the Son of man.
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