“
And he directed the people to sit down on the grass. Taking the five loaves and the two
fish and looking up to heaven, he gave thanks and broke the loaves. Then he gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the people”
Matthew 14:19
It was almost Christmas year 2002, and the first
Alabaster Box Ministries
outreach was about to launch. After presenting it to my church, literally hundreds of people got on board.
“I want one, I’ll take three…” the congregation hollered.
The plan was to fill shoe boxes with Bibles, hygiene supplies, and trinkets and wrap them for the homeless in our community. We were blown away when almost 500 boxes came back filled to the rim in just a short period of time.
Having the large amount of presents we did, we decided to have three outings, 2 down town, and 1 to a local ministry on Christmas day. Over 100 people showed up to help pass out gifts.
We did our two down town outreaches, and they turned out so well. It was a huge blessing to everybody involved. Then came the last outreach on Christmas. It was time to head to the local ministry.
When we got there, we unloaded the gifts. We stayed while they had their service and even helped serve the meal. The line just kept growing and growing. Everyone who was with ABM was thinking the same thing, “we don’t have enough gifts.” We decided to wait until the end of the night to pass them out in hopes that a lot of the people would leave. Well, they didn’t!
We had three stacks of gifts, 1 for women, 1 for men, and 1 for children all totaling 150 gifts. When they lined up to get them, there were about 300 or more people. No joke! We all looked at one-another, then we prayed, “God, this is in your hands.” We got so busy passing out the gifts and praying that we didn’t realize what was to happen next.
A gentleman came up to us for his gift, and we told him that we didn’t have anymore. About that time, a woman came to us and said that we gave her a man’s gift. If we took it from her, she would not have one. About that time, someone looked down at our feet, and there was a gift for a woman. Well, we quickly exchanged her gift and gave it to the man standing there.
Expecting to have to repeat our decline to the next person, we looked up, and there were no more people! EVERYONE got a gift that night!!!
God is so amazing. We could not believe it. He loves to do miracles! Do you need a miracle in your life? Just pray, consecrate it to Him, and believe.
He is the same yesterday, today, and forever.
He is my God!! Do you know Him? His name is Jesus Christ!
