The church newsletter was due in just a couple days, so the church clerk called Marcia to ask if she had her postcard ready. Marcia sounded worried, and said she had no idea for a poem to go on the postcard this month. None at all. “But,” Marcia said, “I will keep praying for God to give me a poem!”

The poems began in 2003 when God gave Marcia the idea of writing a short poem, putting it on a postcard, and then mailing the postcards to each of the church members who were housebound and unable to attend church in person. “Even if I couldn’t visit everyone,” Marcia thought, “at least they would all have a note of encouragement.” She completed the cards, dropped them off at the post office, and crossed that idea off her to-do list.

Then the responses came in, notes of thanks from several ladies who were thanking her for thinking of them.

“Reading their cards left me feeling so ashamed,” Marcia remembers. “At that moment, everything changed. Suddenly these weren’t just names on a bulletin board. They were real people with feelings and needs, hopes, and dreams. They were just like me.”

Eighteen years later God is still giving Marcia poems, and she is still writing postcards. Not just a few, either. Each month the church clerk slips more than 200 postcards into the newsletter while Marcia emails scores more to friends who live far away. The poems are kind and loving and bright with hope-filled smiles.

“Marcia loves people,” says Marilee Ager, the Klamath Falls church clerk. “The day after she told me she didn’t have an idea for this month’s poem, she called to say God had given her a poem during the night, and it was ready to go on the postcards! Her life is a ministry of love.”

‍

Click on the images below to read some of Marcia's poems...