Tag Archives: creation

Let’s Recycle Together!

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At The Hope Center, we are all about recycling and reusing products to save money and protect God’s creation. We have a recycling program that works with cardboard, paper, and rags. Sales of this recyclable material help underwrite the cost of our many programs and ministries, but it also keeps this items from becoming trash in our ever growing dumps.

And now we need you to help us with a little recycling. You know all those plastic bags you stuff full of groceries and other items at your favorite stores, well, we need them.

Our Thrift Stores are in desperate need of those plastic bags!

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We reuse your used plastic bags for shoppers in our Thrift Stores. Using these bags helps us keep our costs down by not purchasing new bags and it keeps new plastic bags from becoming trash.

If you have piles of plastic bags and don’t really know what to do with them, donate them! We’ll use them. And we’ll urge our shoppers to donate them back to us to be reused again and again.

As you go shopping this weekend, collect up your bags and drop them by our offices or our thrift stores instead of throwing them out.

This is a very small way to help in a big way!

To donate your used plastic bags, please call 301.739.1165, email hagerstownrescue@verizon.net or just drop them off at our Thrift Stores in Hagerstown & Chambersburg or at our Administrative Office in Hagerstown. Directions and hours are listed below.

Thank you for helping us!

The Hagerstown Thrift Store is located on the corner of Walnut & Church Streets with parking in our central lot off of Church Street. The Hagerstown Thrift Store is open M-Sat 9am – 5pm.

The Chambersburg Thrift Store is located at 64 S. Main Street with metered street parking and also parking in the rear. The Chambersburg Thrift Store is open M-Sat from 9am – 4pm.

Our Administrative Office is located on our main campus across our parking lot from the thrift store on Church Street between Walnut and Prospect Streets. Our office is open M – F from 8:30am – 4:30pm.

Happy Earth Day!

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“God saw all that He had made, and it was very good.” Genesis 1:31a

earth

Today is the day that America, and the rest of the world, focuses on this incredible planet that we live on.

While some of the focus is spent worshiping the creation, as Christians we can celebrate Earth Day by worshiping the Creator.

Celebrating Earth Day is a wonderful opportunity to remind our children, friends and community about how beautifully, wonderfully and intricately the earth was created.

With each flower that blooms, each bird that chirps, each river that flows, and each web that’s spun, God has His hand in every delicate detail of this fascinating planet.

And when we look at the complexity of every life form on this planet, and the delicate nature of this incredible ecosystem, we must recognize the fact that it was designed so brilliantly and done so with such care and love.

Because of the love that God put into His creation, we as humans, and especially followers of Christ, must do our best to preserve and protect His creation.

Even at The Hope Center, we are helping to protect God’s creation by recycling clothing, shoes, purses, metal, paper and cardboard. By recycling these materials, we are protecting the unnecessary demolition of forests while also saving valuable land from being turned into trash dumps.

Recycled bales of cardboard weigh, on average, 850-1100 pounds. We recycle approximately 36 bales every 2 months. Bales of clothing weigh, on average, 900-1200 pounds. We recycle approximately 39 bales every 3 months.

Clothing is sent to Third World nations to be handed out by missions groups and humanitarian organizations to help provide the basic of physical needs to people who just don’t have the ability to clothe themselves.

It’s important that we worship our creative God by protecting, as best we can, this wonderful creation that He gave us dominion over.

So take some time to enjoy the beauty of God’s creation today.  Look up at the sun, stop to smell the beautiful flowers in bloom, walk through the green grass and pause to thank the Creator for such an elaborate and brilliantly designed world for us to enjoy! And remember that each animal, insect, tree and flower and everything else that you see has been spoken into existance by the same God that knows you inside & out and loves you more than you can imagine!

Celebrate God’s Creation!

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Happy Earth Day!

Some people may be surprised to see us celebrating Earth Day. But as Christians, each day should be a celebration of the wonderful world that God created!

Just take a few moments and slow down your daily routine to really look around at the beauty of the creation. Stop to watch the bees work in the gardens. Take a minute to listen to the birds sing. Actually stop and smell the roses.

Each living and non-living thing on this planet was crafted and created with care by our most marvelous and creative God! Think about how wonderful earth really is. From north to south, east to west, God has made a vast world full of different climates, beautiful and varied environments, spectacular species of animals and vibrant human cultures to compliment!

Each day on planet earth is another day to just stop and recognize God’s infinite creativity and splendor. And when you look around and see all that is beautiful in this broken world, remember that He is creating another world that is perfect beyond our imagination!

And as you take the time to admire the plush, green grass, the pink & purple blossoms and soak in the warmth of the sun, remember to also protect His creation. We can all do our part to worship God the Creator by taking care of His creation!

At The Hope Center, we’ve been a recycling facility in Hagerstown for many years. While this is an extra form of income to help fund the many ministries, this is also our way as Christians to be good stewards of this magnificent world that God gave us!

We recycle cardboard, newspaper and clothing in our Baling & Recycling Center. But we’ve also started recycling plastics and aluminum in our other facilities.

Taking care of the earth is not about worshiping the trees or “mother nature”. It’s about showing respect to God for His creation. He gave us dominion over this planet and with that power comes the responsibility to use the resources to our advantage and also take care of the earth to give our children and grandchildren a healthy, beautiful place to live in the future.

God created the earth to be a habitat for life (Isaiah 45:18). We have a responsibility to God to be good stewards of the earth He entrusted to us. We cannot exploit the earth’s resources in greed and technological ambition, nor must we care for the environment more than we care for God’s most precious creation, people.

We must also be careful not to neglect the needs of our fellow man. God called us to help each other. While He loves all of His creation, the most important to Him is mankind. After all, we were made in His image (Genesis 1:26). The most precious of all of God’s creation was “fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalm 139:13-14).

So take some time to thank God today for the air that you breathe. Thank Him for the wonderful color display that He gives us each spring. Thank Him for the resources of this planet that He created so that we could have an abundant life. And be sure to do your part to keep the earth clean and leave it a better place so that the future generations can see how magnificent God is through His creation!