WWJD As A Caregiver?

Live on American Family Radio, this is Peter Rosenberger. This is Hope for the Caregiver. This is the program for you as a family caregiver. More than 65 million people right now in this country are serving as a caregiver for an aging loved one, a special needs child, someone who has some type of trauma, affliction, disease, whatever the impairment, addiction, alcoholism, whatever the impairment, there's always a caregiver. And this program is specifically for those individuals to help you stay strong and healthy as you care for someone who is not, and we are glad that you are with us. This is our last show of the season before we go on a hiatus until the first of the year. And I just want to spend some time with you all and deal with the challenges of Christmas for caregivers, but also rejoice in the time. I got a couple of programming notes here.

Excuse me, I'm still getting over this cough, but I am getting better. On our podcast, go out there, we have a lot of bonus stuff that will be continuing on through the holiday, so please take advantage of that. It's free. We have well over 600 episodes now on our podcast, and some of them are the full length program that we do here. Some of them are bonus things that are your caregiver minutes. Some of them are just songs. There's so many different things we have out there that you can take advantage of and share it with people that you know that are struggling and need to hear just to encourage you. Sometimes I do excerpts from my book, whatever, but it's all free.

Just take advantage of it out at hopeforthecaregiver.com and you can see it and see how to get to that. And one of the things I want to tell you this morning before we get started, you know about all the, of course, the tornado damage that was happening and it's been just such a heartbreak for so many. I just wanted you to know something that someone's doing about that.

There's a lot of static in the media and vilifying certain people. And one of those was Mike Lindell of MyPillow. He's showing up on Christmas Eve with 10,000 pillows that they're giving away. They're just going to give away to tornado victims for Christmas Eve. And I imagine he'll be giving away a lot more than that too, given what this man has done.

So I just, I felt like you would want to know that. Pray for him. This man has done a lot to try to lift up the name of Christ in the midst of all this craziness. Some people look at him and think he's this or whatever, and you see what the media does.

Actions speak louder than words. And he is going to be on the ground there doing that. He's one of the sponsors of our podcast. And I just felt like you guys would want to know that. And you can go out and see more about that at hopeforthecaregiver.com.

We'll have some things posted on that. Samaritan's Purse is on the ground. There are some wonderful Christian ministries that are working tirelessly to help these individuals. And I'd ask for you to continue to pray for them. And as you're looking for things to sponsor or so forth to help with this, there are people that are doing that. And we've had the folks from Samaritan's Purse on this program when the COVID first hit and they were up in New York. And if you remember that, the media and the left were vilifying them.

And they were just there to help. And so it just shows again that you really can't trust what comes out of the mainstream media these days. They're going to just continue to slant this towards whatever policy or things that they have. And there's another one called Eight Days of Hope.

But there are just lots of different things out there. These folks are hurting. This is Christmas time and they're hurting. It's cold and they're struggling and we could be a part of that. So please, I would ask you to prayerfully consider being involved with that.

But I thought you'd like to know that about MyPillow and Mike Lindell. I mean, he's just 10,000 pillows. Sometimes all people have is to just be able to lay down and have a comfortable place to lay down and get some sleep while they figure out how to rebuild their home.

And he's going to give what he has, which is a lot of pillows. So keep them in prayer as you do that. A long time ago, I was in an interview with the reporter and I may have shared some of this story with you prior, but they asked me, and this wasn't a Christian interview, but it came out of left field. This question came out of left field and the reporter asked me, said, what would Jesus do as a caregiver?

And you remember when everybody's wearing the bracelets and so forth, WWJD and all this stuff. And evidently it triggered something with this reporter and they knew that we were a Christian program. So what would Jesus do as a caregiver?

And I looked at the reporter, I said, well, I don't know what he would do, but let me tell you what he did do. And I referenced Jesus assigning care of his mother to the apostle John from the cross. And I said, he delegated and he ensured that Mary had care for the rest of her life. And he did that from the cross in the midst of his own agony.

Now go backwards 33 years prior to that. And we think of the nativity at Christmas as kind of a pastoral scene. You know, everybody's just all sweet and nice and it's so quiet, silent night, you know, and I think there was that aspect of it, but the event also must have terribly frightened Joseph and Mary. By most scholars accounts, Mary was just a teenager. I mean, she probably wasn't more than 16 years old. Think about 16 year old daughters and granddaughters that you have or, or cousins or sisters.

Think about all those. And the pressure on her as a 16 year old, and she's not even married at that point, they're still betrothed. I guess, I don't know if they were married or not, but they were betrothed when she became pregnant.

I don't know when they actually got married, but think about that. And Joseph was a carpenter. So it's not like he had an enormous amount of skills at birthing. So you know, here they are just a young couple dealing with this reality and how frightening that must have been. All that's involved in childbirth.

It's a, we come into this world in a bloody way, and Jesus did as well. And she must have been exhausted, tired, so forth. During what was probably not that so silent that night, Mary trusted God. As she delivered the child that, the wonderful song says, the child that she delivered will soon deliver you, as from Mary did you know. And she delivered this child that would one day deliver her. And she trusted God with this. And in his agony from the cross, Jesus remembered her and trusted John to care for her. He delegated. Christmas comes with a lot of sadness for many, yet there's comfort in knowing that that same savior who saw to his mother's need also sees ours, even when our nights are not so silent or holy.

We can also discover that he delegates others to help us along our journey as well. We got more to go on our special Christmas program today. This is Hope for the Caregiver. This is Peter Rosenberg.

This is the program for you as a family caregiver. According to the latest figures from the CDC, approximately 1 million Americans are injured annually as a result of falling on ice and snow. I'm Peter Rosenberg, and as a caregiver for my wife for more than 35 years, I understand the importance of helping someone with a mobility impairment get in and out of the home safely, particularly in inclement weather. And that's why this winter I'm using Heat Track. They're snow and ice melting mats that you just plug in and they provide you a safe walkway to your garage, to your mailbox, to your deck, to your business. Whatever the need, Heat Track has a mat that will fit that need and make sure that you can get in safely during snow and ice. You don't have to plow, you don't have to shovel, and you don't have to worry about falling because you're walking on something that is safe and secure and dry. This winter, let's stay out of the emergency room.

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