Another Miracle
There are very few days in one’s life, when you find yourself doing something totally different from anything that you have ever done before. These special days can be very exciting because they add colour to your world in a way that your normal experiences do not. I had the privilege of having such an experience on the evening of December 6th.
On that amazing night I watched about 40 people receive awards and graduation certificates for high school, a first year university class and Toastmasters. What made this night like no other were the graduates. They were people of all ages who had come to Calgary’s Mustard Seed Street Ministry for help and they got it. Not just in the form of food and shelter, but in food for the mind and very often for a broken spirit.
One student told me last year, that's what made the Mustard Seed so different for him from the other Shelters in Calgary, was that the Mustard Seed, “had a heart.” Indeed, what I felt as I watched these brave people over come their many fears, and step forward to receive recognition for their achievements, was an over whelming sense that God was in The First Baptist Church, that night… and He was very pleased. He was pleased the church was packed in honour of these people, He was pleased that they had been given this opportunity, and He was thrilled that everyone involved that night had taken some kind of leap of faith, so that His love, compassion and mercy could be shown through and to everyone in the room.
If ever God’s love in action was displayed for all to see, it was this night. A young man barely in his 20’s spoke movingly of starting a new chapter in his life. “Gone,” he said, “are the nights of self mutilation and sleeping behind garage incinerators. I’m going to St. Mary’s University College next term and I will succeed!” I know him and I know that he will. Many of these people that night, had never before been encouraged in anything, let alone honoured!!
As I sat in the church trying to hide the tears streaming down my face, I was reminded of these words, made by another man rejected by the society of the day. As Jesus said, “For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I was in prison and you came to visit me…I tell you the truth, whatever you did do for the least of these, you did for me.”
