Delighting

As I've been praying for guidance over the past weeks God has been answering in some ways I didn't expect. My main prayers have been for answers about not only a goal for our packing party but for wisdom on which church to approach first about being our Central Drop-Off Site for Operation Christmas Child.

Maybe most people don't agonize over these decisions. I mean it's easy enough to just choose a number for a goal or pick up the phone and randomly call one of the two churches we have in mind as Central Drop-Off Site. I don't know which of my 3 P's-- perfectionism, procrastination, or people-pleasing--is most responsible for my crazy level of indecision but it's plagued me all my life.

While seeking answers lately, though, I discovered I may be asking the wrong questions.

In my regular Bible reading this week I read Psalm 37:4 "Delight yourself in the Lord; and He will give you the desires of your heart."  Such a familiar verse but I honestly haven't thought about it or read it in a while. I stopped to meditate on these words for a bit, then turned back to my computer to read a daily devotional that arrived in my email. And, wouldn't you know, the same verse popped up in that devotional. Okay, God, I get the message.

Webster's dictionary defines 'delight' when used as a verb to mean "to take great pleasure or to give keen enjoyment or to give joy or satisfaction." So my new question is: do I delight in the Lord?

I delight in looking at all three of my sweet little grandsons. I delight in finding bargains and getting quality items at a low price. I delight in food of almost any kind.

But...do I get pleasure, keen enjoyment, joy and satisfaction from the Lord? Oh, how I want to delight in Him. As I ponder what that means I think of His promise to give me "the desires of (my) heart."

IF I can really learn to delight in Him then the perfectionism, procrastination, and people-pleasing won't be an issue...

Because IF I learn to delight in Him the desires of my heart will be...HIM.

Goal Guidance

If nothing else this Operation Christmas Child journey keeps me on my knees and in dependence on God because nothing happens without Him.

So here I am again praying and waiting for guidance. After weeks of waiting for the shipping window dates from Operation Christmas Child headquarters we received that information almost two weeks ago. I immediately sent emails to the church that allows us to use their facility for our packing party to see if our desired dates in September are available. Now...we wait for the church to get back to us. Last year that took six weeks. We have a deadline of May 6th to let OCC know our date and the number of boxes we plan as our goal.

We have three weeks to get those answers.

We've been praying also about our goal for the packing party. We know we'll be getting larger boxes and will need more items to fill them and more truck space since each carton will only hold 16 boxes this year instead of 23 boxes.

Today I had a phone call with my regional director and he gave me the rating for our box quality from last year's packing party. The boxes from our 2017 party earned an "A" rating but the four boxes they pulled as samples from the 30,590 boxes we did in 2018 all needed more filler items added so we received a "C" rating this year.  I was disappointed because I honestly thought our boxes were better in 2018 than in previous years.

In our last meeting we studied the sovereignty of God. God knew which boxes would be picked to be rated from our 2018 packing party.  Maybe this "C" rating is an answer to our prayers and He is telling us to cut back further than we thought we would.

Should we do only 22,000 boxes this year instead of the 27,000 we'd been recently planning?  We do have an inspection process at the end of the line but obviously it wasn't good enough--at least for four of those boxes.

We believe God's arm is NOT too short and He can do anything. The question is: how many boxes does He want us to pack?

Please pray with us for His answers over the next 21 days as we look together for His goal guidance.