One family’s quiet legacy of giving
To celebrate our faithful donors, we are featuring this message from a family with a long history of supporting Rockford Rescue Mission.
Rockford is our home. When someone in our home is hurting, we hurt with them. Rockford Rescue Mission has a 60-year track record of serving as the hands and feet of Jesus in our community, and His words in Matthew 25 resonate deeply with our family. When we serve the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, the sick and the stranger, we are directly serving Him.
We choose to give financially to Rockford Rescue Mission because it reflects Christ’s priority of the poor. We do this quietly and we really don’t want our name mentioned publicly. For us, that’s in keeping with Jesus’ instructions about giving to the poor, not letting the left hand know what the right hand is doing. And it is certainly not to denigrate anyone whose generosity is more publicly known. Thank God for the way He uses people and organizations in that way, to help make giving contagious. Our family just chooses to do it this way.
All of this helps define our family legacy of giving. Whatever we have is from the Lord, so it simply makes sense to give back to Him first. Each of our generations has tried to instill this in the next. And Rockford Rescue Mission has been a big part of that ongoing legacy. There is such joy in giving to His work, and then to see God use those gifts to help change people’s lives.
To us, Rockford Rescue Mission closely follows the example of what Christ would do if He were living in Rockford. He would be helping the poor, the addicted, the lonely, the hopeless. The people who need help most. To quietly know that our family’s legacy is so intertwined with the Mission is a true joy.
