Just a boy from Lathrop, Missouri...

The phone rang and when I picked up it was my dear friend from across the country. Her voice is sweet, kind- I thought it was a call just to chat. But instead she said, "Remember that boy at my son's school, the one that we helped because he had no lunch money?" I remembered. Her son had been coming home from school hungry because he had been giving his lunch away to his friend. So our friends went to the school and put lunch money into this young boy's account. "He lived with his dad," she continues, "and Sunday, his dad was killed in a car accident."

He came back to school, just two days after the accident. My friend's son saw him, and instead of hanging back, not knowing what to say, how to act, a sixth grade boy became Jesus' voice, Jesus' hands, wrapped his arms around his friend, and said, "I'm so sorry about your dad."

This morning, here in my Portland, Oregon home, so far away from that small town in Missouri, I awake with that fatherless boy on my mind, my heart. I have never met him, never seen him. But I feel teary, there's a lump in my throat, and I know I have to pray, pray for this boy. I pray that through all this he will come to know God the Father's love, that God will guide all decisions being made now concerning him and where he will go, who he will live with, that he will be placed somewhere with someone who loves and serves Jesus, that God will comfort him. Will you join me and pray for this boy from Lathrop, Missouri?