“FREE” is something you don’t even hear at yard sales!

I got a phone call from Trish Smith, one of the ladies on the design committee for 210 the other day. Trish, Lynn, Carolyn, and I had received a message from Don saying that someone in the community was donating a warehouse full of furniture to 210! Don and I were pretty skeptical and thought it was probably really old and not worth going out to see, but of course I was wrong… again, and when Trish called to tell me it was all brand spakn’ new I thought Christmas had come early and needed a bigger stocking! “Colette they called me again and let me know they have a ton of to-go coffee cups, it has some other logo printed on them if that’s ok, is that something we could use?” “Trish! Are you serious? Yeah!!!!!” Here I was worried about the start up costs for the coffee shop and just like that God meets our needs again…and again. So now we have furnishings for the conference, and prayer room…for free! Let me not forget the other amazing office furniture store that is giving us a HUGE discount, storing what we buy until move in day, AND giving us FREE delivery!!!!Not to send out the message that we don’t need any more help by all means! But one blessing at a time we getting closer and closer to completion. Thank you to everyone that can and has helped us get this thing started!

2:10 am

So yesterday was my 25 birthday and every year my Mom and Dad tell the birthing story of my arrival, just like folks tell the nativity story at Christmas, and just like the children do after hearing the same 'ol story one to many times, I began to recite the facts and details of my birth. "Mom, I know, I know, don't even start telling me the story again...I was born on the same day as the Corcoran Cotton Day Parade, you stayed up all night the night before finishing costumes for the kids in Dad's 4th grade class and then, blah blah blah I was born in the Hanford hospital at 2:10 in the morning...Woah, Mom… I was born at 2:10 in the morning…210!? That is so weird." My dad then declared in his silly preacher man voice, "The Lord knew what you were going to do even before you were born!" Even though I had heard the verse, "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you." I had comprehended it in an almost fairytale type of understanding, you know, God put that in the Bible just to make you feel special, just to make you feel loved…It also says God knows the number of stars that are in the sky, the number of sand on the sore, apparently he knows how many hairs are on your head too…it all sounds cool, but really? Come on, why would He take the time, why would He care about that? I mean He couldn’t know EVERYONE, just the important people to him like Abraham, and King David, and Moses...those guys, right? Hearing what my Dad said about be being born at 2:10 gave life and breathed truth into my viewed fairytale type verses…HE KNOWS ME… Why do I continue to read TRUTH but yet continue to deny TRUTH. God means what he says, He never changes his mind, and when He says He knows us before we were even born, He’s not just saying that to make “un-planned” children feel planned, He is declaring that NO child is an accident, no birth unwanted by him. We are His, and He KNOWS us, and now I know it, really know it. No more questions asked, no more doubting or reading the verses and interpreting them the way I want them to sound. When He says it, my only job is to believe it.