As children, we all learned the story of the ugly duckling that was ridiculed because of the way he looked. He didn’t fit in.

However, at the end of the story, that ugly duckling became a beautiful swan.

God gave Moses directions to use goat hair for construction of the tabernacle, a place where His presence would be.

Goat hair.

Now to us, goat hair is not a beautiful thing, because we think of the animal it comes from. We picture dried goat skins covering the tabernacle.

To us, that would be the “ugly duckling”.

But in Exodus when God commanded Moses to use goat hair, He didn’t mention the skin, just the hair.

“You shall also make curtains of goats’ hair to be a tent over the tabernacle…” Exodus 26:7.

It had a greater purpose.

And goat hair must be fairly soft, because even today, it is used to make soft brushes.

There are definitely times that we all feel like the duckling in the story---a person who is ugly and not useful, one who doesn’t have much to give to God besides a broken, shattered life...

AllWorship has been publishing an inspiring story in our weekly emails for 17 years. You can see a collection of nearly 500 encouraging stories by going to the blog on our website.

We can all use some encouragement, especially during these turbulent times! So just click here to some a dose of inspiration!

We hope you enjoy the stories! And feel free to pass them on to your friends.

Our sister ministry, The Christian Heart, highlights what people do in their everyday life to show their love for Jesus. Our mission is to encourage Christians to put their faith into action. Here is one of our stories....

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Foreign mission fields are closer than you think. Throughout our lives, we have gone on short-term mission trips around the world. Our trips to extremely poor places enabled us to understand hunger and the effect it has on children. Five years ago, after a trip to the smallest villages in Kenya, we realized that the percentage of hungry people in Central Alabama was the same as in Africa. After much prayer, we began to share a few bags of food from our pickup truck to some of the most food-deprived children in our county. We discovered that government programs are unable to meet the hunger needs of approximately 21,000 children in our five surrounding counties. We poured ourselves into this, and began to...