When I finally started to breathe again, I put down the phone and stared out the window. How can so many things happen in such a short time? Less than six weeks ago we were wondering how we were ever going to find a new place.
I needed some air. I wanted a long walk on a warm, sunny, white sand beach. I opened the back door I got a wet breeze. I smirked at the sky and shooed the dogs out into the damp. Since Red Bluff boasts no oceanfront properties, the misty back acreage would have to do. We went out the fence and down the mild incline toward the Spring creek. The dogs, feeling as though they were part of a prison break, scattered in five directions. I chuckled and called them to follow me around as I paced the property and thought this thing through.
Although alone, I could not help but shake my head in wonder. The unexpected number of people who have come into this leadership community, with a desire to serve, is astounding. More amazing is the way they care for one another. I have seen not one selfish or greedy heart. It’s like finding the Hope Diamond. It is one of the rarest things I have ever seen, and I feel such amazement that I often stare off into space and, just for a bit, let myself fully experience the beauty of it.
With so many oppositional people in our world, who set their life upon making sure that their nasty, hateful, judgmental demands and expectations be met, being with this group is like walking on warm white sand while lapping waves cool my feet (in other words, my favorite place). These are proof that there are indeed God imitating, unselfish, kind, servant hearted people. I know because I have spent six weeks working with them to make this monstrous move possible.
The most amazing thing about it is—the numbers are growing. These people are really not an anomaly. The Vinedresser's House is a safe haven for the ones who want to give. Here, they will also receive. We care for each other.
I walked the creek, beautiful and clear, flowing over the rocks in a sparkling dance. However, at this time of year, that creek runs with bitter cold mountain runoff. Inviting as it was, I shooed the dogs out of its path. Toweling off shivering canines was not on my to-do list. They romped and bumped and played among the leafless trees while I let my mind rest a moment.
It is all so overwhelming.
This group of people who have come together—these people who did not know, just 45 days ago, that we would be headed, in just a few days, to sit in a conference room to discuss how to implement doubling the size of the ministry. There are people in this group I have known for 20 years. There are others I met 4 weeks ago. All of them have the same heart.
They ask the same question.
How do I help?
It is a rare beauty to find that many hearts beat with the same desire. Not one person has insisted they get glory, money, fame, a name or anything else that would cast a spotlight on their actions. If there were one, I think it would be so blaringly opposite that the others would quickly sanction. But there isn’t. Rather it is a group of people determined to do one thing.
Find the need and meet it.
If everything comes together at those meetings, The Vinedresser’s House will be enlarged into a more accessible, need meeting, relationship building, heart healing place where people find that their lives are not only made better, wiser, more educated, but their hearts are filled with the infectious tenderness I see in this group.
Why? Because we believe in what we do, and in all of our natural, emotional, social, ethnic, religious, and personal differences we share a single, unaltering, willing to sacrifice to make it happen.
We want to help. All of us.
What leaves me in utter wonder is that we are not begging for people to do the work. They are unexpectedly appearing on our doorstep. These people who have come to us and us to them, they are a vivid picture of what, if one were foolish enough to believe social media, one would assume no longer exists.
Healthy Community.
Caring, loving, committed people who have come together to do one thing in many ways, because we all ask,
How can I help?
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We at the Vinedresser's are thankful for your continued support and prayers. We ask you to remember us next week as we work on details and finances, so that we can once again offer a sanctuary of the body as well as a sanctuary of the heart. We are thrilled and amazed at what God is putting together. In all of our wildest dreams none of us could have thought this up. God truly does do more than we could ever ask or imagine!
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