Sometimes, God quite unexpectedly and purposefully changes my mind and turns me gently around. Does He do that to you too? That happened this past week as I was writing this month’s blog. Suddenly, I was pulled in a completely different direction than I had been heading. This blog kind of wrote itself…
It’s because three things happened.
First, I was opening mail for my “boss,” the dear, legally blind lady I care for. Recently discharged from rehab due to a fall, she has been unable to attend her little church outside of Bridgeton. When she misses, the elderly and efficient church secretary sends her a Sunday bulletin to keep her up to date on the congregation and all the happenings.
“How many now?” she asked eagerly as soon as I retrieved the bulletin from the envelope. I smiled, knowing just what she meant.
“1,769,” I responded incredulously.
This faithful, generous flock of way less than 100 mostly senior saints has already donated 1,769 shoe boxes for Operation Christmas Child, the Christmas gift initiative from Samaritan’s Ministries that sends tens of thousands of colorful boxes chock full of gifts for marginalized children across the globe. After this past Sunday, the number of these boxes from that congregation has probably increased once more.
And this is August!
Now I can’t speak to the quality of the contents of all those boxes. I do know, however, what my sweet boss puts together each year in the ten shoe boxes she donates. I am the one who orders, shops, and helps her package them up. She stuffs them with a variety of nice gifts. And we love doing it. It gives us both great satisfaction and joy thinking we are going to put a smile on the face of a child thousands of miles away, a child loved by our Savior, a child He wants to bless.
After talking about what items she still needs to purchase in order to finish up her boxes for this year, it occurred to me to pop up the Operation Christmas Child’s website and read her some stories of children who had received boxes in various needy countries in the past. I wish she had been able to see the short testimonial video clips of some of the smiling, grateful folks who had been gifted a shoe box as children. They explained what it had meant to them. We had to be satisfied, because of her eyesight, for me to just read their words.
This was the second impactful event of the week.
We both wiped away tears as we heard about Jaki from an under resourced orphanage in Guatemala who shared a toothbrush with ten other little girls. She received a shoe box and in it was her very own toothbrush. She was overwhelmed, amazed that someone so far away would think of her. Care.
A little girl named Nadia was overjoyed to find Barbie in her box. Unselfishly, she shared it with all the other little girls in her village, passing it around night after night so everyone had a turn to love and play with a real doll. She barely got to enjoy her gift herself, but she was glad to make others happy. Precious!
Our favorite story was about a young boy named Yves of Rwanda who found a wool scarf in the shoe box he was given, the very first gift he had ever received in his life. Disappointed, he tried to trade it for a soccer ball his friend had happily discovered in his shoe box. Yves lived in the tropics. Nobody needed or wanted a scarf. He packed the impractical gift away.
Then, three years later, Yves and his whole family were evacuated from his war-torn country to Buffalo, New York, one of America’s chilliest cities!
Receiving the scarf was no coincidence, Yves says with a big smile. “Jesus is always a step ahead, waiting at the end of the line to keep me warm like a loving father does. The scarf not only kept me warm; it warmed my heart.”
So many touching stories of how these gifts of love have changed lives and paved the way for Gospel conversations.
What beautiful children! What a powerful, tangible way to demonstrate the love of Jesus, to represent His care and concern for these little ones who may never even have heard His Name. How we loved that each box we would donate would contain His story and an invitation to personally know Him, the God Who rescues, the God Who is near. The God Who is good, great, gracious, and glorious. He is also generous.
My friend wanted to fill up ten more!
Later that week, I took a break from writing my blog and ran a couple of errands for my mother-in-law. As I strolled through Walmart, I suddenly took notice of the cardboard bins filled with school supplies crowding the aisles. All on sale. Not really having a child heading back to school or even a little grandchild in need of these supplies, I hadn’t given a moment’s thought to these items. But my Father had. He somehow stopped me in my tracks and I immediately pictured a pile of empty green shoe boxes just waiting for such treasures in my fanciful head.
Incident number three.
I grabbed erasers, pencils, pencil sharpener, markers, tablets, pens, and more. How excited will a child somewhere be to get a bunch of these school supplies that many of our kids simply take for granted? That WE just take for granted?
Now I wanted to fill up ten myself!
So they are the three reasons I was compelled to write this blog this week.
Back to School stuff is on sale everywhere. Charming Shoe-y hasn’t even made his annual appearance at LFA yet to make his appeal. And I am not suggesting we need to compete with any other church. But I am proposing for you to get ahead of the game and begin now to collect necessary gifts for your boxes. Somehow money gets tighter and the days get busier in December--even though your compassionate hearts long to meet the needs of children beside your own.
Can I humbly suggest you spend a little now? And then each pay week, spend a little bit more? It will be wise and even fun to start now to plan a budget, to look for sales, to include your children in the process of shopping for a child somewhere who will benefit greatly from their own thoughtful sacrifice. Haven’t you always intended to do that? Watch the poignant testimonies online with your kids. Maybe let them contribute some money from their piggy banks. Pray together as a family for the child who is to receive their special gift. Prayer is the best thing you can put in that box! What a beautiful family project! What an important lesson on generosity you all will learn! What a valuable insight into the heart of the Heavenly Father Who loves all the children of the world and wants them to come to know Him.
I don’t want this blog to be a page filler, an easily overlooked cheap advertisement or an emotional appeal to guilt you into a contribution. Rich and Barb don’t even know what I am writing about. Neither does Franklin Graham! I just want you to experience amazing joy and satisfaction. I long to encourage you, even prompt you, to self-check your heart and make sure yours is in tune with your Father’s. He is all about children. He wants them to come to Him. And I think this is but one pretty effective way for that to happen.
Won’t you consider filling a shoe box?
Or ten?
That will make Shoe-y smile for sure.
And a child (or ten!) on the other side of the world will too.
After all, it is August…
16 By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. 17 But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him? 18 Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.(1 John 316-18 ESV)
—Eileen Hill
