We Love Everybody and You’re Next!

Dear Friends & Partners in Ministry,

Thank you so much for a most successful and enjoyable Fall and Winter season of ministry.  Your support has been a cause of great rejoicing here at Jerusalem House and has freed us from the tedious work of fundraising to perform the more rewarding work of ministry.  We have been greatly blessed to aid some of our most marginal and at risk neighbors in getting their children started in another school year, through one of the best holiday seasons, one of the harshest winters, and the constant daily struggles of working among the poorest of the poor in center city Allentown.  Before I do anything else I gratefully extend our appreciation to you and to God for your generous support, in so many ways, to some of the least fortunate of your neighbors.  God Bless You Abundantly!!!

I thought of you in my devotions this morning, part of which was the study of the unrighteous steward who Jesus praised for being more prudent then the sons of light.  I never quite understood this parable in Luke 16 as I did this morning.  Evidently it has to do with utilizing something of lessor and fading value in a way that will bring greater value and reward in the future.  Jesus says to use the mammon of unrighteousness, so that after it fails, it will still have been made profitable to us in the future.

I realized that our wise use of money that will fail us, if in no other way then our death one day, has to do with the principle of transmutation.  Like the woman who sold her precious jewels and donated the money to an orphanage only to find her jewels again in the appreciative eyes of the orphans she had blessed.  Or like Luther who stated, “I have held many things in my hands, and I have lost them all, but whatever I have placed in God’s hands, that I still possess.”  Or like John Wesley who said, “I value all things only by the price they shall gain in eternity”.   Or even the license plate that proclaims, “Only what you do for Christ will last”.  Money and possessions are a trust from God that must be transmuted for the use of Heaven or they’ll be lost forever.  I thank God that you have shown in your giving that you get it.  The words on the wall in a New York rescue mission describes those who never quite get this concept.

Angels from their realms on High

Look down on us with wondrous eye

That where we are but passing guests

We build such strong and solid nests

But where we hope to dwell for aye

We scarce take heed one stone to lay.

Thank God He has turned our hearts to our source and eternal dwelling place.  And yes we have the key to a secret that the world will never have.  We can take it with us!  We just deposit it in our heavenly account.  I have heard it said that, “giving to God’s work is like investing in a mutual fund.  You are contributing to a variety of ministries, each of which will have a high rate of return in new investments that jump the gap between time and eternity, between earth and heaven.”

Matthew 6:19–21 “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. 20 “But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in or steal; 21 for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” 

Yes, thank you for your great faithfulness to your heavenly account, which so often happens to fall to our blessing, in the work that we do with some of our most at risk neighbors.  As you prepare for your Easter, Resurrection Day, or First Fruits celebration, which will lead into a season of warm weather activities and vacations please remember us again.  We’re strongly in need of some of that new life again.  It never seems to fail but every year at springtime it seems as though someone builds a dam only allowing the most persistent of giving to make its way through to us.  From then until the Autumn months we struggle along desperately, our light threatening to flicker out.  It’s one of the most dastardly of feelings.  I understand that many non-profits such as ours suffer this anomaly, but I have to believe that it doesn’t have to be so.  Please remember us as you tend to your heavenly accounts this Spring and Summer.

In closing , please keep us in prayer as we also do for you and yours.  Our staff has suffered a great deal of sickness, hospitalization, car accidents and miscellaneous difficulty but we are at our posts and we hope to provide ham or turkey dinners to all of the families we serve for the coming celebration or our Lord’s resurrection.  Than our first community cook out for the Spring will hopefully be the last Saturday in May, with one to follow each month.   And of course our Community Center is open four days a week where everything you can conceive that a family might need is sought after constantly.  We look forward to a blessed Spring and Summer season of ministry with you as we all work on our heavenly accounts.  

Thanks, Prayers & Blessings, 

Dan, Peaches, Michal & the Church @ Jerusalem House Ministries

202 N. 9TH STREET – P.O. BOX 8569 – ALLENTOWN, PA. 18105 – (610) 776-7794