Welcome to today's encouragement from Our Daily Bread.

I'm Kirsten Holmberg, and I call today's reading, Meeting the Needs of Others.

Philip's father suffered from severe mental illness and had left home to live on the streets.

After Cindy and her young son, Philip, spent a day searching for him, Philip was rightly

concerned for his well-being. He asked his mother whether his father and other people without

homes were warm. In response, they launched an effort to collect and distribute blankets and cold weather gear

to homeless people in the area.

For more than a decade, Cindy has considered it her life's work, crediting her son and her deep

faith in God for awakening her to the hardship of being without a warm place to sleep.

The Bible has long taught us to respond to the needs of others.

In the book of Exodus, Moses records a set of principles to guide our interaction with those who lack plentiful resources.

When we're moved to supply the needs of another,

we're to not treat it like a business deal and should make no gain or profit from it.

In Chapter 22, if a person's cloak was taken as collateral,

it was to be returned by sunset.

Because that cloak is the only covering your neighbor has. What else can they sleep in?

Let's ask God to open our eyes and hearts to see how we can ease the pain of those who are suffering.

Whether we seek to meet the needs of many, as Cindy and Philip have, or those of a single

person, we honor him by treating them with dignity and care.

Today's Our Daily Bread Devotional Scripture reading is from Exodus chapter 22, verses 22 through 27.

Do not take advantage of the widow or the fatherless. If you do, and they cry out to me, I will certainly hear their cry.

My anger will be aroused, and I will kill you with the sword. Your

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