Humanity Intersects

At Cherry Street, our largest volunteer day of the year by far is Thanksgiving. On a single day more than 500 of our fellow citizens will arrive at one of our ministry sites to serve.

As a side note, this year we're doing something a bit different. Instead of only having a single service site where the community can come for a delicious Thanksgiving meal, more than 300 volunteers will be delivering nearly 500 family Thanksgiving boxes so families can stay in their homes. We're doing this to rally support for the sanctity of the home and to encourage the family meal whenever possible.

This is the time of year service to others becomes most visible. But what causes our community to show up during this season, like at no other time of the year?

There are two intersecting realities at play; it's getting colder and it's the holiday season. The cold reminds us there are those who are not warm and the holidays remind us there are those who are not happy.

Thankfully - these end of the year human intersections are fantastically attractive to the community. Social profit organizations like Cherry Street, look forward to the last twelve weeks of the year. We can historically count on the community to show up in ways that makes the first 40 weeks of the year look like a blur.

News and media outlets are on hand to both promote and report on community involvement.

For those of us who by calling and vocation serve in the human intersection all year long - we are both grateful and humbled by the generosity of the loving communities of Northwest Ohio and Southeast Michigan.

For the listening and generous heart it may go without saying - but let me say it anyway; 'The need for humanity to intersect is a year long responsibility.'

Here's today's question: 'In what way will you purpose a human intersect?'

The reality is, none of us were conceived in a relational petri dish experiment. No - all of us are where we are ... all of us ... because someone engaged and intersected with us. Someone in your past shared a substantive experience that became part of you - there was a powerfully molecular exchange that changed you, set your course and gave you compass.

God from the beginning wrapped Himself on earth in vessels made of flesh - humanity ... you and me. Given the reality that God is completely invisible He designed the relationship we have with Him to depend on our visibility.

Consider this:
A warm, nutritious and seasonally appropriate Thanksgiving meal will stabilize hunger but only God can settle old accounts.
A warm coat, gloves, hat and scarf will stabilize against the cold, but only Jesus can redeem a history.
A warm human experience can stabilize the fragile, but only the Holy Spirit can breath new dimensions of hope.

The capacity of life transformation only God can bring, is dependent on the infrastructure of life stabilization that only we can bring.

Of the many things that can transpire within human intersections my prayer is that God, through the gift of His son will find a way from you to someone else or from someone else to you - ensuring that the greatest of all human intersections may see the light of day.

Humanity Intersects!

Dan
A Runner