thank you blessings
Hearts Filled with Gratitude
One of the most meaningful blessings at Open House Ministries is hearing from the residents in our program. Learning first-hand how spending time in our family shelter is impacting their families and their lives.
Our hope for each one in our program at any age is to feel loved and accepted. We hope their experience at Open House Ministries gives them the insight they need that a better, brighter future is possible. And to feel supported as they work through the program and practice new life skills that can change their lives. We also invite each person to experience a new life in Christ, restored, with counseling and encouragement to walk in faith.
As Thanksgiving approaches, we wanted to share some of the words of gratitude expressed by our residents with you. They are living proof that your prayers and support are reaching families in our community as they recover from homelessness and find hope.
“Because of OHM, my family now gets to be together and properly build our foundation. We thank God and all the staff at OHM.”
“Because of OHM, my family now gets to be together every day, have a roof over our heads, and live happily.”
“Because of OHM, my family now gets to be who we are and be loved.”
“Because of OHM, my family now gets to sleep in beds with warm blankets, eat three hot meals at a dinner table, and shower with running water. Most of all, we get to be together in a safe environment.”
“Because of OHM, my family now gets to breathe easier, dream bigger, and be present. We have the security of knowing we are covered, healthy, and supported. We get to spend time together without moving from one place to another.”
“Because of OHM, my family now gets to have a good, whole life with new values and a better outlook on life. It has been fun.”
Please know how deeply grateful we are for you. And for sharing in the work of this ministry as we reach more families struggling with homelessness in Vancouver. We hope this Thanksgiving you feel the blessings of hope and love as we celebrate together.
chaplain's corner
Change Is Not Hard. Growth Is.
We say change is hard, as if it were a universal law. But that is only half true. Not all change is hard. Some change happens with no effort at all. Leave ice on the counter, and it changes from solid to liquid with no attention required. Graze through the holidays, and you change from slim to round without much effort.
I never expected life's problems to fix themselves. But some days, I would have settled for things just staying the same for a little longer. Let me enjoy the kids like this before they're all grown up. Let me get caught up at work before more piles on. And could my coffee survive one interruption without becoming lukewarm?
Paul puts us in a grave: “You were dead in your sins” (Ephesians 2:1). You cannot discipline yourself into resurrection. Someone has to give you the life you cannot give yourself. That is what Christ does. Crucified for our sins and risen from the dead, he makes us alive by his Spirit. The Spirit enters the very place we cannot repair. He reaches into the depths of our hearts and gives us a new heart with new desires. The same power that raised Jesus from the grave now works in those who belong to him (Romans 8:11). And that power does more than slow the slide. We begin to love the God we once resisted and resist the sin we once loved. Growth is still hard, but the Spirit is at work in us, restoring what sin has unraveled.
At Open House Ministries, we help families do the hard work of rebuilding their lives. But our hope reaches beyond what hard work can accomplish. We depend on Christ to give the life that makes growth possible.
• Chaplain Jon Nichols
Even staying the same turns out to be asking something. Physics gives us a picture of this in entropy, a principle expressed in the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Energy tends to move from concentrated to scattered, becoming less available to do useful work. Or, to picture it more simply, things left to themselves tend to unravel. The universe is tilted and runs downhill.
Some changes cost us more than cold coffee. Nobody sets out to become the bitter person everyone avoids. We nurse an old injury, rehearse what we should have said, and discover we've spent twenty years feeding something that is now eating us. The resentment grows while we're busy with other things.
Yet sin is no law of nature, and we cannot blame our choices on physics. God did not make us for this. Sin ruins something good. We are not a sweater poorly knit. We are one that got snagged on a branch and began to unravel.
Surely, then, we ought to pull ourselves together. Make a plan. Develop some discipline. Stop making excuses. But that assumes our problem is something harder work can fix. We imagine ourselves standing at the bottom of a hill, needing to try harder to climb.
