Samaritan’s Purse 2024 Gift Catalog

 

For Christmas gifting, many people shop online or from gift catalogs for gifts picked specifically for friends and loved ones. The gifting tradition has many historical origins but ultimately, for Christians, derives from the three gifts brought for the baby Jesus by the wise men from the East. The secular Christmas tradition completely forgets or ignores this.

The Samaritan’s Purse 2024 Gift Catalog is a Christian option. For full disclosure, I have no connection to Samaritan’s Purse except as a donor. The catalog turns gift-giving around. The gift to your loved ones is a gift in their name to a person, family, or community hurting and in need.

Samaritan’s Purse is a Christian organization operating in over 100 countries. It carries out mission activities and disaster relief efforts and is run by Franklin Graham, the son of evangelist Billy Graham (1918-2018). www.samaritanspurse.org   1-828-262-4980. 1-800-353-5957. Their physical address is:

            Samaritan’s Purse

            P. O. Box 3000

            Boone, NC 28607 USA

The gift items are listed on this web page: www.samaritanspurse.org/catalog24  The suggested donations can be from an individual or a group. $ = US dollars.

1.      Feed a Hungry Baby: baby formula for a week. Suggested donation: $6.

2.      Provide Hot Meals for a Child: hot meals for a week. Suggested donation: $7

3.      Rescue Children in Crisis: shelter and daily needs, education. Suggested donation: $75

4.      Care for an Orphan: support orphanages and children’s homes. Suggested donation: $35

5.      Help a Family Survive a Disaster: supplies, water filters, food, temporary shelter, cooking kits, hygiene items. Suggested donation: $45

6.      Put a Stop to Human Trafficking: education. Suggested donation: $125

7.      Serve Desperate Refugees: food, shelter, etc. Suggested donation: $125

8.      Feed a Family: after natural disasters or war. Suggested donation: $35

9.      Bring Clean Water to a Community: water filters, pumps. Suggested donation: $75

10.  Give a Filter to a Family: water filter for clean water. Suggested donation: $100

11.  Drill a Village Well: Suggested donation: $10,000

12.  Honeybees: hives, equipment, training. Suggested donation: $20

13.  “Jesus Loves Me: Lambs: toy lambs that play the song, “Jesus Loves Me.” Suggested donation: $10

14.  Baby Chicks: chicks, a coop, eggs to eat or sell. Suggested donation: $14

15.  Blankets and Bedding: Suggested donation: $6

16.  Bless the Marriage of a Married Couple: Alaska wilderness lodge, marriage classes, airfare. Suggested donation: $6,000

17.  Send Help to Mission Hospital: airfare and lodging for volunteer medical professionals. Suggested donation: $50

18.  Provide Life-Saving Medical Care: airlifts, medical care. Suggested donation: $100

19.  Restore Sight to the Blind: cataract surgeries. Suggested donation: $40

20.  Provide Life-Saving Medical Equipment: refurbished donated equipment. Suggested donation: $25

21.  Help Repair a Cleft Lip: surgery. Suggested donation: $250

22.  Mend a Child’s Heart: heart procedures, lodging. Suggested donation: $2,200

23.  Send a New Missionary Doctor: Suggested donation: $100

24.  Equip a Hospital Chaplain for Ministry: Suggested donation: $500

25.  Build or Improve a Mission Hospital: Suggested donation: $35,000

26.  Build a House of Worship: Suggested donation: $15,000

27.  Give a Copy of God’s Word: Suggested donation: $10

28.  Stand with Persecuted Christians: build churches, family care. Suggested donation: $40

29.  Adopt a Shoebox: Shipping and other costs for Operation Christmas Child shoebox gifts: Suggested donation: $10

30.  Disciple a Child: material, teacher training, Bible. Suggested donation: $6

31.  Give a Dairy Goat: goat or other dairy animal for milk to drink or sell. Suggested donation: $70

32.  Give a Baby Kit: ultrasound, vitamins, diapers, wipes. Suggested donation: $75

33.  Plant a Grove of Trees: tree seedlings. Suggested donation: $45

The Inferior Five

The Inferior Five are a comic book superhero team made up of persons who are not what one would expect of such a team. They are Merryman, a 98 pound weakling who wears a jester’s costume and is very smart; Awkwardman, who is super strong but very clumsy; The Blimp, who floats in the air rather than flying. He literally needs a wind to blow behind him. He is blown about by every wind (Ephesians 4:14); White Feather, who is a skilled but emotionally insecure archer; and Dumb Bunny, who is “strong as an ox and almost as intelligent.”

The Inferior Five always win the day. They are truly superheroes. Instead of Inferior, they might more correctly be named the Unlikely Five.

God always choses the unlikely person, the unlikely nation, the unlikely way. His ways seem like foolishness to the world.

He chose, not a powerful empire, but the Jews, to be the nation which He used to reveal and explain Himself to the world. 

He chose a shepherd boy to become the greatest king of Israel and a man after God’s own heart. This man also committed adultery and ordered the murder of a loyal friend.

He chose a woman who was essentially being held as a sex slave by a brutal king. Her assignment was to protect His people from extermination by a scheming government official.

He chose uneducated fisherman, a hated tax collector, a little boy, a cuckolded husband, the wife of a wardrobe keeper, a sheep-herder, and a cousin of the King of Judah, to become His prophets and apostles. 

He chose a Gentile trained in the science of the day to write the first history of the church which began as an exclusively Jewish movement.

He chose a vicious persecutor of His church to become its greatest intellectual and the first great explainer of Christian doctrine. 

Many of us feel that we have no talents, that we have nothing to offer. We fail to remember that God has chosen each one of us and has given each of us the particular abilities we need to perform whatever duties He has for us to perform. He has equipped us to be, and expects us to be, on His unlikely team.

When You Have a Fifth Place Car

On a recent NASCAR television broadcast, Kyle Petty, a former driver and now a television race commentator, was talking about one driver who was unable to pull any closer to the lead than fifth place in the race no matter how hard or well he drove his automobile.  Petty said, “Sometimes you just have a fifth place car.”

Then, Petty added this, “When that happens, your responsibility is to come in fifth.”  Do not make excuses.  Do your best with what has been given to you. You are responsible for your use of what you have been given.

Christians call this stewardship.   To be a steward is to manage the property or affairs of another person.  Christians are expected to use their God-given gifts to further the work of the Lord.

What? You say that you do not seem to have any “gifts?”  All Christians have at least one gift, the unearned and unearnable free grace of God who spent the most valuable thing in the universe, the life of Jesus Christ, to provide for our salvation.  He spent this resource for me and for you, as a gift to us, as if each of us was the only one.  The sacrifice of Jesus did restore order to the entire universe, but it also was made for each of us … individually.  A gift.

No Christian should think to use their lack of ability as an excuse for not performing a task which God has clearly assigned to them.  He gives us whatever time or resources we need to do whatever He asks because nothing and no one can stand in His way or prevent Him from achieving His purposes.  “For the LORD of hosts hath purposed, and who shall disannul it? and his hand is stretched out, and who shall turn it back?” Isaiah 14:27

    

As members of the ἐκκλησία we each have been given specific gifts so that we may perform specific functions.  “And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.” Genesis 2:15

All the gifts are needed and none of the gifts are more important than any of the others for the proper function of God’s plan.  Some can teach, some can comfort, some can do manual chores, some can provide financial resources, some can preach, some can pray, some can nurture faith in others, some can care for the sick, some can cook, some have a special connection with children, some are judges, some are peacemakers.  All the gifts are exercised under the leadership of the Holy Spirit..

“For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ.”  1 Corinthians 12:12

“For as we have many members in one body, and all members have not the same office:” Romans 12:4

“As every man hath received the gift, even so minister the same one to another, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God.” 1 Peter 4:10

“For as we have many members in one body, and all members have not the same office: So we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another. Having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us, whether prophecy, let us prophesy according to the proportion of faith;” Romans 12:4-6

James, the brother of Jesus, gave us the other side of this, a warning. “Therefore to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin.” James 4:17

What Is That in Your Hand?

"And the Lord said unto him, What is that in thine hand? And he said, A rod. And he said, Cast it on the ground. And he cast it on the ground, and it became a serpent: and Moses fled from before it." Exodus 4:2-3

Moses was carrying a rod used to lean on while walking, to steady oneself while climbing a hill, and to steer sheep in the way they should go. He used it in making his daily living but it was just a stick. God said to throw it down, basically meaning "give it to me." In God's hands it became a snake, made water come out of a rock, and cut a walking path for the Israelites through the Red Sea.

God wants us to give Him what we have and let Him use it. Moses' rod was basically his means of occupation. We can do the same with ours. The seventeenth century lay Carmelite brother, Brother Lawrence. was a cook and shoe repairer who attracted worldwide attention because of his insistence on living a Christ-filled life, cooking for Christ and repairing shoes for Christ. He turned his occupations into a witness.

We may be prevented by employer policy from "proselytizing" at work but we can provide a witness by our competence, honesty, diligence, and perseverance. Christians should stand out as different. We really are different.