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Be an Ark, Please

If you read this blog, you know how much I admire the work of Rod Bennett. His book Four Witnesses: The Early Church in Her Own Words is on just about every short list of recommended reading I’ve ever produced. It’s one of the top-selling titles bought from this blog.

As much as I admire his work, I love the man even more. He’s a real gentleman, delightful conversationalist, and a great dad.

Early this week, Rod sent me a note asking for prayers. The floods in Georgia took the Bennett family’s home and all their belongings. Our mutual friend Mark Shea wrote it up with many more details, which I’ll paste below. With Mark, I’m asking your prayers for Rod and his family. With Mark, I’m also begging you to help the family with money if you can. At least consider buying a case of Rod’s book on the Apostolic Fathers and passing them out to your friends!

Here’s Mark …

I spoke to Rod this morning. He was standing in eight inches of mud on the *third* floor of his house. He is the soul of Christian courage and fidelity in all this, though his voice cracked a couple of times and nearly broke my heart. They have lost *everything*. And they had *just* sunk $30,000 dollars into a renovation (“The roof didn’t leak” he said.) Thanks be to God, they have flood insurance and so should be able to find a new home. But everything they own is gone and they are, like us, basically lower middle class folk. His library he built his whole life is goo. All their kids’ things. All his wife treasured. Everything. Look around your home at all the dear familiar things you take for granted. Now imagine it all taken away. Every stick of it. He is meditating on Job and saying to God, “I’m not going anywhere.” But it’s bitterly hard.

They will stay in their folks’ summer home for the time being. But that’s 150 miles away, which means his wife will have to radically scale back her work hours as a nurse–and that means way less income. Plus, the kids are traumatized and are now suddenly thrust into a strange place far from friends and familiar things.

All of which is to say “They could really use, not just your prayers, but your help.”

As it happens I’ve not done a Tin Cup Rattle this quarter since a) I hate doing them and b) God has been generous to us lately. That means that whatever you might have been thinking of putting toward my tin cup is still burning a hole in your pocket and looking for something to do.

So here’s what I’d like to propose: I would like to urge you to go log on to PayPal and click on the “Send Money” tab. Then enter Rod’s email address (wonderboss@yahoo.com) and be as generous as you can be. Do NOT–I repeat, NOT–send the money to me by clicking on my Paypal button, but instead log onto the site and use the “Send Money” tab to get it directly to Rod. If you can’t do the PayPal thang, then please send as big a check as you can to:

Rod Bennett

640 Parkcrest Pl. NE

Marietta GA 30068

I know you guys. I have very high confidence in your generosity and kindness! Please delve down in to those great big hearts of yours and make God proud. Such generosity will be remembered well at on That Day.

And, as you can, link to this post and get others on board to help a good family in desperate need. Unleash the Power of the Blog!