Winter-weather Blessings

Winter-Weather Blessings

If you help the poor, you are lending to the LORD—and he will repay you!

Proverbs 19:17

Minnesota winters can get bitterly cold. The students in my community are expected to go outside for recess unless the wind chill has caused the temperatures to dip into subzero territory. This means there are plenty of wintry days when elementary-aged children are bundled up and sent out on snowy playgrounds to burn off pent-up energy before returning to warm classrooms.

With two children in elementary school, I’ve learned how desperately schools appreciate donations of extra sets of boots, snow pants, mittens, and warm hats. They are needed not only for kids whose parents have a hard time affording these items, but also as backups to lend out on the occasions when children, my own included, have traipsed out of the house with only one mitten or without a hat—or when their snow pants have become temporarily lost in the bottomless pit otherwise known as the school’s lost and found.

Because children seem to always mysteriously lose one mitten the same way my dryer eats single socks, I’ve started picking up a few extra sets of mittens, hats, boots, coats, and snow pants during Black Friday sales, on spring clearance racks, and at garage sales, and I also stash away the items my kids outgrow seemingly overnight. As our weather turns from brisk autumn days into snowy winter mornings, I bring the extras to the school office or to a trusted teacher, knowing that they’ll get the items into the hands that need them most.

Because there is no end to the need, when we take care of children or of the poor—no matter who they are, where they are from, or what their parents believe—we are actually lending to God, and he is generous beyond measure when repaying us. He may not return the cost to us mitten for mitten, but he will meet our physical and spiritual needs when we are generous.

—Julie

— Today’s Act of Kindness —

Take care of the children in your community by donating winter clothes to a local school or homeless shelter.