Growing Faith

How quickly I can forget.  This morning I was reading some of the miracles of Jesus and noticed how He focused on faith. "According to your faith will it be done to you," He said to the men who were blind, and their sight was restored.  I thought that over as I prayed afterwards and asked God to build my faith.

But...as I said...how quickly I can forget.

I expected a truck delivery this afternoon with pallets of hats, visors, water bottles and sunglasses for our 2020 shoeboxes. Instead, I was surprised with a call at 7:20 telling me the delivery would arrive at 8:30. By God's grace my husband was still home and offered to delay his work day to go with me to unload.

I wasn't prepared for the amount of cartons we unloaded from those seven pallets, and I wasn't prepared to see how much space they consumed in our storage container.  I forgot my prayer about building faith and started to sink into discouragement.

To make it all worse I realized I can't lift those cartons of baseball hats the way I could even a couple years ago. I've neglected any workouts over the past year (other than walking and slow running) which certainly doesn't help the issue, but I think some of it is just the loss of muscle mass that comes from hitting 67.  Doubt started to sweep in like winter waves as I asked myself, "Can I keep doing this? Can our team of basically old and/or disabled people keep doing this?"

Before long the sides of the container were filled leaving only a narrow path down the middle. The baseball hats need to be taken out of their cartons and re-boxed/consolidated to make more room so they had to stay along the side rather than be stored in the back.

And...what to do with the water bottles?  The cartons they were shipped in are falling apart. That's the problem when you look for the cheapest prices--you get dirty, dilapidated cartons. They also shipped the caps separately so they will need to be put on. Are we going to put something in the water bottles? We could stuff them with beanie babies but we don't have enough of them yet to fill all 3400. Meanwhile, they take up every last inch of storage space in that container. Did I mention we won't be packing them for almost another year?

Then I remembered--I asked God to build my faith. Well, I guess He has plans for that.

We finished getting the cartons shoved into the container and I headed off to meet with Kit, our new Central Drop-Off Team Leader.  Did I mention I am woefully untutored in the needs of the logistics network and lost my Logistics Coordinator this year?  I mean--I have more questions for poor Kit than I have answers.

As we talked I got teary. I felt bad for spilling my emotions on her when she really needs support. But as I prayed through my tears I told God I AM trusting Him--trusting Him to figure out what to do with these water bottles; trusting Him to figure out what else we should buy and when; trusting Him to find the strong arms we need to move these cartons and load these trucks; trusting Him to grow the faith I need to even keep trusting.

"So faith comes from hearing and hearing through the word of Christ."--Romans 10:17 ESV  Let me hear the word of Christ. Let me listen. Because...I really need to grow faith.