Dear TGP Prayer Team,
This isn’t a normal post, but I’m asking you all to read, pray, and respond as God leads in relation to what is written below. Thank you!
God wouldn’t let the baker sleep, so at 2 AM he got up and started baking bread…three professional batches’ worth of bread. At breakfast time the next morning, he loaded it all up and took it to a local orphanage. Three hundred children sat at the tables, but their plates were empty. They had gotten dressed and ready for school, come to the table, thanked God for the breakfast they did not see, and waited. And then the baker came.
Following his delivery, the milkman knocked at the door. His delivery cart had broken a wheel directly in front of the orphanage, and the milk would sour by the time the wheel could be fixed. He wondered if the orphanage would be able to use ten cans of milk. Thus it was that three hundred hungry orphans had full stomachs that morning when the cupboards were empty.
This true story of George Mueller’s orphanage in Bristol, England, is well-known and loved by many. We often highlight the faith of the man who started the orphanage, or the fatherly provision of God for the orphans. Today, I want to shine the spotlight on the baker whose name we don’t even know. We continue to tell his story 150 years later, and all we know to call him is “the baker.” He couldn’t sleep, and he listened to the Spirit’s whisper in his heart. That obedience made a huge difference, not only in the provision of a meal to hungry children, but in the subsequent encouragement to trust God’s provision as his story has been retold to generations. He didn’t know exactly what was going on or would result, but he obeyed.
Today, I’m asking everyone who reads this to be that baker. NEBC (https://nebcvt.org/ ) is a Christian college making a difference for God in the Northeast. They operate by faith, and they need some “bakers” who will listen to the Spirit’s prompting to give what they have. If you’ve never heard of NEBC, here’s a link to an informative interview that discusses both who the school is and the urgency of their current situation: https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1BmdmdFLJn/
Last night, our church took an offering to give toward pressing end-of-the-month needs that NEBC has. I watched an eight year old girl put a dollar bill in the offering plate, and a teenager drop in yard work cash. If children and teens can step up to the plate, all of us can, too. All of God’s children are in this thing of spreading the gospel together, so let’s each do what we can to help. Like the baker in Bristol, you may not know the full impact your gift will have this side of eternity, and your name may not be famous, but – also like the baker – God wants to use you, and you will rejoice in time to come.
