Dying to self
The Haven at Clarity is open! This multi-year effort to open a maternity home in Elizabethtown was able to start accepting residents in early July 2022 and we praise the Lord for His generosity and faithfulness to us! Our first resident has moved in this summer and we are overjoyed.
It reminds me so much of a wheat field. That may sound strange, but I’m from Kansas and know a thing or two about wheat fields. There is nothing like seeing those wide open spaces, with wind sweeping through a field ripe with wheat. Though you usually can’t see wind – where it comes from or where it’s going – in a Kansas wheat field, the wind literally ripples each head of grain. When a sunset falls behind a field like this, red and warm, there’s nothing like it. It feels like home to me.
But the Word says that something had to die to get there. Jesus says in John 12 “Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, to remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. Anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life” (vv. 24-25).
Oh but what they have to gain!
Each individual wheat kernel had to be in the dark soil and die in order to sprout new life. What eventually looks like on the surface to be a sunset-tinged wonder first had to go through a season of death to become a plant that produces many seeds.
Our residents will experience the same kind of ‘dying’ when they enter the Haven. They have so much to lose when they agree to come and be a part of our program: a whole lifestyle, initial separation from old habits, loss of ‘freedom’ to come and live within the home environment. It can be a scary and unsettling experience for them and the grief is real.
But oh! what they have to gain! They stand to gain abundant life (John 10:10) – not only for themselves, but for their child. When our residents are able to work on goals specific to them and their situation, attend classes about pregnancy and parenting, receive free material assistance, and live in a safe and loving environment with provision of food and a soft bed, they have available to them the opportunity to thrive! To build a live for themselves and their little family that would be abundant and sure.
That dying to self that we all have to do each day to live for Jesus brings such life, and true freedom, if we would have the courage in Christ to trust Him for the abundance.
Please pray with us for our clients and residents. Though the path can be at first painful, pray our residents and clients see the possibility for abundant life on the other side, in Jesus’ name.