99% Is Not Enough

Check out this boy from Uganda and the joy he gets from his Operation Christmas Child shoebox BEFORE he even opens it. No wonder I love this ministry so much!

Things are really kicking into high gear as we're only 18 days away from National Collection Week--the time when we harvest all the Operation Christmas Child shoeboxes for the year. Life is busy and I wonder constantly if I'm doing the right things with my time.

God has provided great sales on summer clearance items over the past two weeks and I've amassed more than 1100 pieces of clothing for next year's boxes as well as a lot of summer toys. It takes a lot of time to buy it and record it and store it all and I worry that that's taking too much time away from the things I'm supposed to be doing as Area Coordinator for Operation Christmas Child here in Northwestern PA.

This week God blessed us with an application for a prospective team member and now I need to call her and begin the interview process. We don't have any members on our team to take care of media so I have a lot of press releases to send out also. And I need to contact our collection center coordinator in Erie to see about getting training done for our new relay centers.

The most fun part of this season of the Operation Christmas Child year, though, is seeing God answering prayer right and left and up and down. Last weekend our Area Coordinators from the five states in the Mid-Atlantic Region all submitted prayer requests for events happening in our areas over the weekend. What a joy it's been this week to hear of all God's doing all around. There's nothing I'd rather be doing.

And as I wonder if I'm doing enough to promote Operation Christmas Child, I wonder what could ever be enough. If we could reach 99% of the children around the world, that would be pretty amazing. But I've been thinking how even an amazing 99% wouldn't be enough.

99% wasn't enough for Jesus who told of a shepherd who would leave 99 sheep to go and find that ONE who was lost. Jesus Himself is that good shepherd and He calls us to follow Him to find even ONE.

So no matter how large the ministry of Operation Christmas Child becomes, as long as there is ONE child left on earth who doesn't personally know God's love our work cannot be done.

As hard and tiring and sometimes frustrating as it can be, we need to get into that 'easy yoke' with Jesus and keep on looking for ONE MORE box for ONE MORE child.

Even 99% is not enough.