Welcome to today's encouragement from Our Daily Bread.

The reading for today titled Love's Greatest Gift was written by James Banks.

My son Jeff was leaving a store when he saw an abandoned walking frame, a mobility aid, on the ground.

I hope there isn't a person back there who needs help, he thought.

He glanced behind the building and found a homeless man unconscious on the pavement.

Jeff roused him and asked him if he was okay.

I'm trying to drink myself to death,

he responded. My tent broke in a storm, and I lost everything. I don't want to live. Jeff called a Christian rehabilitation ministry, and while they waited for help, he ran home briefly and brought the man

his own camping tent.

"'What's your name?' Jeff asked.

"'Jeffry,' the homeless man answered, with a G.

Jeff hadn't mentioned his own name, or its uncommon spelling, which also started with a G.

"'Dad,' he told me later, that could have been me.

Jeff once struggled with substance abuse himself, and he helped the man because of the kindness

that he'd received from God.

Isaiah the prophet used these words to anticipate God's mercy to us in Jesus. We all, like sheep, have gone astray.

Each of us has turned to his own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

Christ, our Savior, didn't leave us lost alone and hopeless in despair.

He chose to identify with us and lift us in love so that we may be set free to live anew in him.

There's no greater gift.

Today's Our Daily Bread devotional scripture reading is taken from the Old Testament book of Isaiah, chapter 53, verses 1 through 6.

Who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed. He grew up before him

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