Where in South Carolina is Macedonia?

Yesterday, Brushfork Baptist Church was blessed to host a group of people from the Orangeburg-Calhoun Baptist Association. Each year, Dr. Kimmett Lott, pastor of Providence Baptist Church in Orangeburg, SC, leads a team from his association through Southern West Virginia to distribute Christmas shoeboxes, senior cold kits, food and blankets to the needy. This year, about 43 people poured into our activities building to stage, eat, and lighten their load before heading on to Blackwolf Baptist Church and Isaban Baptist Church. Our ladies provided them with a good meal and we sent them off with hugs, handshakes, prayer and a few snowballs.

By no stretch of the imagination are the churches of the Orangeburg-Calhoun Baptist Association wealthy. By the testimony of one of their men, most of the churches represented were small country churches—not too unlike the Southern West Virginia churches they were visiting. But they answered God’s call to serve others, and by answering that call we pray that the lost who are receiving thier gifts will in turn answer the call of the Gospel.

It brings to mind another group of churches that banded together and gave of themselves to serve others in need:

“Now, brethren, we wish to make known to you the grace of God which has been given in the churches of Macedonia, that in a great ordeal of affliction their abundance of joy and their deep poverty overflowed in the wealth of their liberality. For I testify that according to their ability, and beyond their ability, they gave of their own accord, begging us with much urging for the favor of participation in the support of the saints, and this, not as we had expected, but they first gave themselves to the Lord and to us by the will of God.” (2 Corinthians 8:1-5)

Thank God for men and women who are willing to sacrifice of themselves in response to His call.