December 3, 2018
Since my first day at Barclay Press, every day has been a struggle. The financial struggle of figuring out which bills have to be paid and which I might be able to set aside in order to get us through another week or two. The professional struggle of not knowing exactly what I’m supposed to be doing, let alone how to do it, and having to do it anyway. The personal day-to-day struggles.
Jan Pierce writes about these struggles (and so much more) in this morning’s Fruit of the Vine. She reflects on a substitute teaching experience in a fourth-grade classroom where students were “studying the amazing transformation of a chrysalis into a monarch butterfly. The trembling creature hatched on the exact day I replaced the beloved ‘real teacher.’ Worse, I wasn’t fully aware of the project and came dangerously close to stepping on the fragile body when it fluttered out of its cage.”
This “transformation from larva to butterfly” is a striking metaphor for our own struggles, Jan writes, and it’s a miracle. We “are the larva turning into beautiful butterflies.... Sometimes we get inklings of growth – little wiggles while still in the chrysalis.”
But it takes a long time. And it’s a struggle.
“We may not have received our wings yet,” Jan continues, “but the transformation will certainly occur in God’s timing.”
This last week on #GivingTuesday, nearly twenty people donated through Facebook, through our website, or with a visit to our office, raising nearly $1,500 in one day. That may seem like a small amount of money, but for a small nonprofit like Barclay Press, those funds make a big difference! That’s because these financial gifts do the mundane work of paying our bills. But they also do the spiritual work of reminding me I’m not struggling alone. We’re in this together.
Thank you,
Eric Muhr
P.S. Seeds of hope is the three-year campaign to fund the ministry of Barclay Press by developing new titles, supporting small churches, and balancing the budget. In order to stay on target to meet our goal of $162,000 by December 31, 2020, we need to get to $54,000 by the end of this year. As of this morning, we have raised $39,766 in gifts and pledges.
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