Elevated Friday, April 5th, 2019

Happy Elevated Friday! Today we highlight a story of a school district that is creatively solving the problem of some of their students going hungry on the weekends. The Elkhart School District of Indiana has recently started packaging the leftover food from lunch to send home with needy students as meals for the weekends. We all know how important school is for some students as it provides a place to receive both breakfast and lunch each weekday – something they often cannot expect at home. However, weekends can be a challenge. School administrators observed how much food was wasted each day as leftovers and decided to find a way to package it and make it available to these needy students. Now, twenty students receive a backpack full of eight packaged and frozen meals to take home each Friday to sustain them for the weekend.

We all know to give the first of our earnings to the Lord as tithes and offerings, leaving the rest of our money for us to save, invest, and spend. But after all this, we all usually have a little left over at the end – be it money, food, clothes, or stuff. When we accumulate too much stuff, we tend to get rid of it in different ways and call it “Spring Cleaning.” Sometimes we give to charity, sometimes we just toss things out. The point is that we all have leftovers of various forms in our lives. The question is what can we do with them to make the greatest impact on others in need? God bestowed all of us with skills and different levels of creativity that He everyday calls us to use in service to Him. In 1 Corinthians, it says, “There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. There are different kinds of working, but in all of them and in everyone it is the same God at work.” When we view our leftovers as worthy of our God-given talents instead of just trash, we can glorify the Lord in new and creative ways. Today, rethink what you dispose of and think of ways that you could use it to make an impact on others in need.

“There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. There are different kinds of working, but in all of them and in everyone it is the same God at work.” – 1 Corinthians 12:5-6 NIV

Original Article:

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