Match Mission with Joy
Welcome friends to Holy Hills, my name is April Cranford.
Whenever we experience joy, it affects our whole body, impacts our time, and transforms our life. Joy is found in our relationships with God and neighbor. Often joy resides in the most difficult of circumstances such as visiting with a person who is mourning the death of a loved one.
Our human tendency is to keep our distance from people who are in bereavement, for it is difficult to know the words that would be helpful rather than harmful. However, whenever we move toward people who are experiencing loss with a listening presence and actions of comfort, joy and peace can be found.
I am on the front porch with one of the most joyful people I know, Francine Johnson. Her joy truly comes from the Lord! While you are with Francine you forget about the cares of the world and after spending time with her, you walk away a better person. May her story of serving families in bereavement bring you joy.
"I want to say hello to everybody and I love Pastor April. My sister, Beverley (we call her Hazel) and I have a cake ministry. This started when one of our friends lost her dad. She called me on the phone and said, 'Ms. Francine, it would help a whole powerful lot with our grieving process if you would make us a cake.'
So, that's how it started. I make yellow cakes with caramel icing and Hazel makes red velvet cakes. We love to do this, for it seems to be a comforting thing. People, when they are grieving, they want a little something to uplift them. We find if we do it, that even for a few minutes, people are either fatter or happier. We just love this cake ministry. We look out in the community, it does not matter what church, we go and pay our respects.
We learned to do this when our father died. We had so many people come to the house and so many people bringing things.
And that is when I experienced that God is a God of comfort. He likes to comfort His children when things are wrong or when somebody passes. He does not comfort for us to just keep it. He comforts us so that we can be comforters, so that we can pass that comfort along to another person.
My sister and I, we loving doing this cake ministry and we do it all to the glory of God. Thank you."
I encourage you to take a simple step in mission this weekend by going toward difficult circumstances and letting the joy of the Lord fill your whole body, impact your time, and transform your life.
Take care and blessings to you this day.
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Additional Resources
Francine and her sister Hazel purchase boxes for their cake ministry at The Cheese Shop in Stuarts Draft, Virginia. https://thecheeseshopva.com/
Many thanks to McHale & Justina for the opening song, "Church in the Wildwood" in the video. Listen to music by McHale & Justina on Spotify and YouTube. Follow them on socials, Instagram and Facebook. Click on their picture to visit their website.