Today in Bible study our dear Helen was giving us our “mission moment”. Each week she reports what’s going on with different missionary families serving around the world. Today she was talking about Operation Christmas Child. The Grace church, where we meet each week for our study, always participates. This is a program where a billion shoe boxes are packed with little toys, hats, toothpaste, soap, etc., shipped and hand delivered to children who may have never gotten a present in their entire life. This is a countrywide project. People in churches all over the country, like this one, spend months collecting shoe boxes and the things to pack them with. Then they hold a festive evening assembling the boxes and wrapping them. They are shipped to a huge warehouse where the boxes are packed to go to children all over the world, with volunteers that go with them to personally hand each one to a child and watch them open it. The stories and videos of this amazing project can be found at:
www.samaritanspurse.org
After Helen shared the day and time to come and help assemble the boxes, she added that a little booklet explaining Jesus to the children is tucked in each box. She said imagine the box you wrap has the capacity to change a life forever. Some of these children never even heard of God, much less the story of Jesus.
As I listened to Helen speak, I tried to imagine that. Never hearing of God. Never hearing the Christmas story. I can’t remember a time in my young years that I didn’t know about God and Jesus. I can’t remember a time in my life that I was without the power of prayer. I can’t remember a time, not a day, not a minute, that the Holy Spirit wasn’t right beside me, wherever I was. Even at three and four – as far back as my memory goes, I remember my first bedroom, on Holly St in Amsterdam NY, and there wasn’t a night I didn’t go to bed without saying my prayers. How can that be? A child growing up and never having heard of God and Jesus.
I tried to think of how I feel when I discover something entirely new to me and it changes me in some small way. I thought of how even if your God is different than mine, at least we still have God in our lives. We are not alone. People are not the end all. I thought of what bothered me most about the Hunger Games. I hated that Katniss didn’t have a Higher Power. She was completely alone when people failed her. In those frightened, terror filled moments alone, she had no one to call upon. And that wasn’t real. But these children are real and they lead some very terror filled lives.
But to never have even heard of God? To not have had the chance to learn about Him? To have Him in your life? To question Him? To argue and get mad at Him? To explore your God as He has been introduced to you through your family values? Well…really…
I can only imagine.
And so, as another day goes by, I realize there’s a lot about God and the missionaries that I have taken for granted all these years, and….I have written.
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