I've been working on writing thank you notes to churches who brought in shoeboxes for Operation Christmas Child this year. I got 60 done before Christmas and this week God gave me a burst of motivation and I got another 78 written.
I wanted to do all the ones for the churches in areas that lie outside of our area team but bring their boxes to us. I'm still waiting for my regional office to mail me copies of the drop-off logs from the Bradford relay center and then I can finish those. My Church Relations Team will finish the ones for Crawford and Warren counties soon.
Altogether there will be about 220 churches and groups who donated the shoeboxes that God used to give us that amazing total of 34,941 shoeboxes.
As I wrote these notes--one by one--I thought of and prayed for those churches. Some brought in a few boxes and some brought in a few hundred but most were in the range of 30-50 boxes. I thought of how they'll all likely be meeting tomorrow to worship God--each of those 220 churches in their own building and with their own leaders.
But all of them are parts of our Northwestern PA Operation Christmas Child total of 34,941 shoeboxes. And, more important, all of them are part of the Body of Christ.
My mind wanders and I think of those churches multiplied by the thousands of drop-off centers where shoeboxes were collected in 12 (I hope that's right) countries around the world.
Thousands of churches and groups coming together to collect millions of boxes--each destined to touch ONE CHILD with a gospel opportunity. What a great picture of His Body coming together to do His work.
A mystery, indeed!
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