December 12, 2012 ~ Day12: Giving our hearts (with cheer)

You, Lord, hear the desire of the afflicted;
You encourage them, and You listen to their cry.

Psalm 10:17

Day 12

Thoughts ~ Are you alone but not lonely, enjoying this time in your life where you can do whatever you choose to? Or are you lonely, but not alone, living in a house of people, but you sense something amiss? Or are people surrounding you with love, in a full season of your life? We all have different seasons we travel through over our lives with a backpack full of joys, prayer requests and praises. But, I must say, my heart breaks for the lonely since I have experienced it at times in my past. And giving absolutely anything from our hearts to them has an enormous impact on encouraging their hearts. As our wonderful Lord hears their cries, let’s be encouragers to them.  Not just at Christmas, but always, but for this beautiful Christmas season, let’s make something special come their way.

To continue with our 25 days of giving our hearts through God’s love, let’s be people who lift up the lonely. Maybe this is a season in your life where you have an abundance of money, but for most of us who have been affected by the Great Recession in various stages, we don’t. Today’s giving can continue all year and for anyone that loves shopping, you’ll probably get into this so much we will need a new forum to chat about it. This 12^th giving day is all about making a personalized package.

Action ~ The 12^th giving of our hearts is called about cheering someone who is lonely or afflicted up. All you need to do is go to the dollar store for the items. Purchase a few packages of magnetic letters like this or whatever your dollar store (or other store) has. The ones I found are a heavy cardboard and not this cute but are brightly colored.

Then sort through them and spell out the name of the recipient, wrapping them in tissue paper with a ribbon and give them to individuals you know are lonely or can use some extra TLC. We believers in the Lord Jesus should always provide TLC to everyone but Christmas time is difficult for some people who are experiencing loneliness so I want to focus on them. Let’s be cheer-givers. Another way you could do this is to spell out special words in case you aren’t sure who you might be giving the magnets to. Joy, trust, faith, hope, love, praise etc. Or fruits of the spirit names such as kindness, patience etc would be great.

Craft type people: glue magnets to scrabble letters or create letters of little words in bottle caps.

Giving someone something that has their own name, or the name of something special to them really says “I’m thinking about you!” So, get to the dollar store and have some fun in preparation of giving your heart.

Pray ~ Thank you Lord for showing me how to minister to people and especially to those who are lonely and afflicted. Open my eyes wide so I don’t miss anyone. Amen. 

Trusting in the Lord, 
Becky