What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works?
Can faith save you?
If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, "Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill," and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead. But someone will say, "You have faith and I have works."
Show me your faith apart from your works, and I by my works will show you my faith. James 2
Below is an excerpt of an article from the NYTimes about how churches are helping with disaster relief. A link to the complete article is included at the end.
For Some, Helping With Disaster Relief Is Not Just Aid, It's a Calling
By KIM SEVERSON
RAINSVILLE, Ala. - Some couples spend retirement playing the nation's best golf courses or hopping cruise ships. Not Marteen and Wiley Blankenship. They collect disasters the way other retirees collect passport stamps.
The minute they got the call from Southern Baptist Convention disaster relief leaders that tornadoes had ripped through the South, the Blankenships grabbed their sleeping bags and sturdy shoes and headed out from their home in Decatur, Ala.Together, they have cleaned up after Hurricane Katrina, mucked out flooded homes in Atlanta and built houses in Sri Lanka. And for the past week they were camped out here in a rural part of northeastern Alabama where 48 lives were lost and thousands more disrupted in the storms.
Mr. Blankenship, 70, and Mrs. Blankenship, 69, heated up chili and Salisbury steak, handing it out to people who drove through a church parking lot and packing it into Red Cross vans that carry meals into the remote countryside.
And they did it all for God.
