Several times in the Gospels Jesus is described as “having compassion on them” when he sees the multitudes or crowds. “ When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them and healed their sick.” (Matt 14:14) This verse comes right before Jesus feeds the 5,000. What strikes me about this passage is that Jesus had compassion for people from seeing their physical needs and looked to provide for those needs. We know that Jesus’s main mission was to preach about the good news of the Kingdom of God and to spiritually save us, but we sometimes forget that Jesus cares for every part of a person, including one’s physical needs.
My hope and prayer is that we would be a people that embodies the heart of Jesus and we would grow in our compassion for the multitudes in our community.
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Brett Newell
Operations Manager
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Thank you to all our volunteers who donate their valuable time. Each hour makes a true impact in the communities that we serve! From our faithful volunteers who support our ministries to each and every donation...every gift of time, talent, and treasure fed the mission of The New Love Center, where the love of Christ provides for all.
A special note of thanks to our friends at West Pharmaceutical Company in Jersey Shore. The amazing employees collected over 2,500 pounds of food to donate to The New Love Center!
“We all donated a little bit here and there. It’s a big thing that we’re passionate about — all of us. We push family at our company. We want to make sure we’re sharing that with local communities and people in need."
Ron Long, West Pharmaceutical Company Maintenance Manager
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March
Program Impact
To learn more about each of our programs, including days and hours, visit our website HERE.
Cafe
778 Meals
Weis Donated 954.65 lbs of Food
Individual Donated 157.29 lbs of Food
53 Volunteers Donated 241.75 Hours
Food Pantry
773 Clients
109 New Clients
191 Volunteers Donated 607 Hours
3,638 lbs of Food Donated
Fresh Food Farmacy
209 Individuals Served
91 Households
Military Shares
138 Households Impacted
Next distribution will be on April 21, 2022
Elder Share
94 Boxes Distributed
Backpack Program
146 Students (Elementary and Middle Schools)
584 Total Backpacks
10 "Bulldog Baskets (High School Distribution)
594 Total Backpacks
PB&J
9 People Picked Up
Next PB&J Day is April 25, 2022
Please come in and see what we do, with a first hand look at how you can make a difference, and get your questions answered.
To set up a time to visit, call the office at 570-244-8838 or click HERE. |
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April
Average size cans tomato products, diced tomatoes, unflavored tomato sauce, or whole canned tomatores for the Café
May
Pudding cups for back pack program
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For our volunteer spotlight this month we want to highlight Christine Barner. Christine is one of our coordinators with The New Love Center and has been a part of our team since the very beginning. Christine plays a major role in organizing our distribution at our St. John location which includes coordinating volunteers, planning out the food needed, and so much more. She has devoted a great deal of her time to The New Love Center and when asked why she does this, her reply was “I do this work unto God and I do it to help people.”
Christine, we thank you for all that you do and making our impact in the community possible!
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How do you experience Easter joy?
Well, first…what words come to mind when you hear the word “joy”?
Ross Gay writes in Book of Delights that joy is “somehow terror and delight sitting next to each other, their feet dangling off the side of a bridge very high up.” (Ross Gay, Book of Delights, pg. 45) Perhaps this joy exists in the midst of both terror and delight—a link to what is lost and what is found. It connects us to the fragile, tender moments we share and also somehow this joy is able to reach into the terror, the holes that have been created in our lives by loss and pain, and somehow find a place to dwell. Actually, these holes…the sorrows in our life…that when we join them together, join your sorrow to mine and our sorrow to another’s, that somehow this bond...this compassion…this community…creates places for joy to dwell.
Perhaps in this way, joy is like the resurrection itself. In the midst of death and gloom where we only expect dark—somehow God’s presence is there. Joy lives in the glue that binds the Good Friday story of death and the Easter Sunday good news of life. It’s in joy’s song where we hear the promise that death does not have the final say. New life is promised through our Savior Jesus Christ.
The resurrection story tells us that it is in the darkest, most hope-deprived places where God’s presence and power show up, and these places are transformed into light-filled, hope-filled, life-filled places of joy.
God is inviting you to live and experience joy—joy through grace, joy through the gift this day can bring, joy found in giving thanks, joy shared in community.
Share joy. Talk about a joy you have. Point to this joy—for in it, you may be seeing the face of God.
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