Good morning…
Just one week ago today, our blog post on my 63rd birthday invited everyone to join us in creating “birthday cake boxes” for thirty senior citizens who live in the Grove Park neighborhood of our city. We were hoping for 30 boxes, 30 boxes filled with a cake mix, frosting, oil and birthday candles.
What we received was abundantly more.
Jeannine Rollins, the woman who was nudged by this Spirit-led idea, will add to each cake kit a carton of six fresh eggs laid this week by the chickens at her farm. At PAWkids last Monday, we made two-sided Easter cards which can be hung on a doorknob to deliver with a flower and a cake box. Cathy Smith offered to add birthday napkins to each birthday box in remembrance of her daughter Abby who went to heaven at age seven in 2004. Jennifer DeShelter hoped to make 19 cake boxes to celebrate the nineteen years her daughter Audrey lived on earth. Jean Young dropped off 12 kits from her evening Banquet Bible study. Each of my weekly classes participated.
This week, no joke, Publix even ran a buy one, get one free sale on what? Cake mixes. Frosting. Oil and birthday candles. God often cracks me up!
Right away, supplies began appearing on our front doorstep. Some boxes were assembled. Other bags included all of the ingredients. Some lids fit tightly on the 9×13 foil pans, others did not. The magical, messy mayhem throughout our home only lasted for one week, until last night I finally finished preparing 60 boxes!
This afternoon, we will deliver this Easter blessing to 11 seniors, and on Wednesday we will share 18 more with the residents of Grove Park. In addition, 25 cake kits are prepared for the next Food Security of America bi-monthly gathering at Northside. I filled two extra boxes, and Jeannine has 4 more. That’s 60 generous birthday cake kits!
It totally feels to me like being planted on the grassy hillside, planted smack dab in the middle of the one miracle recorded in all four gospels.
“All we have are five loaves of bread and two fish,” they said. Jesus said, “Bring them here.” Then he had the people sit on the grass. He took the five loaves and two fish, lifted his face to heaven in prayer, blessed, broke, and gave the bread to the disciples. The disciples then gave the food to the congregation. They all ate their fill. They gathered twelve baskets of leftovers. About five thousand were fed (Matthew 14:17-21, MSG).
Gathering bags of leftovers, I will share these extra supplies with the FSA team, who will certainly share them into our community in the coming months.
This morning, I lift my face up to heaven in prayer, blessing these cake boxes, flowers and cards, before we distribute them to the hungry on the hillside of Grove Park. Thanks be to God who inspires the immense joy of generosity!
…Sue…
