Be astonished!

photo credit to my amazing Central Drop-Off Team Leader--Kit Zinkosky

It's the last day of National Collection Week for Operation Christmas Child. All around the country this scene is playing out as filled trucks are getting ready to transport millions of precious shoeboxes to processing centers to be inspected on the next leg of their journey to boys and girls all over the world.

NCW is hard. It's always a hard week--physically, emotionally, spiritually. We who have been through this for years have come to expect that. Even with all the extra prayer support the struggle can be real.

This might seem like a leap, but I was a childbirth educator for 19 years and I find some analogies between NCW and childbirth. Most of the time childbirth is hard. It's exhausting and scary and filled with unknowns and struggle. But...at the end of it you get the prize--a baby!

And when we all watch those trucks pull away we feel a little of that sense of wonder you feel when that baby is placed in your arms. Ahhh...it's amazing to be part of a miracle, isn't it?!

I read this verse this morning and it seems so appropriate for the final day of National Collection Week:  "Look among the nations! Observe! Be astonished! Wonder! Because I am doing something in your days--You would not believe it if you were told." Habakkuk 1:5

Be astonished! Wonder! God is doing things we may never get to see on earth through these simple but powerful boxes. Yes, it's hard. We get beyond tired but it's not without purpose. It's the good tired that mixes with exhilaration.

God is doing something in our days--and we GET to be a part of it.

Oh, and by the way...we prayed all year for 42,000 boxes and God gave us...

This number includes the 22,048 packed at our packing party in September. We are so blessed!

It's November!

It's November! In two weeks we'll be in the thick of National Collection Week. It always kind of sneaks up on me. As I told Lisa, my regional manager, yesterday on our phone call, "Every November I think--okay, we just need to get through National Collection Week and then next year we'll try to do it better."  Then before I know it we're at the NEXT November and I'm saying the same thing.

I'm a perfectionist by nature. I think my desire to want to do it RIGHT is rooted in pride. I'm praying through that.  The bar is set pretty crazy high in our Operation Christmas Child world with lots of 'things' to work on--encouraging $9 shipping donation for each box; encouraging better quality boxes that are a 'regular size' (not too big and not too small and well-filled); recruiting more drop-off sites; getting those drop-off sites to be missional (with stuff like decorations and refreshments and games and...all while basically LOVING each person who brings in a box AND keeping an accurate count of boxes and getting as many as possible in a carton and loading trucks safely with enough volunteers.

Not to mention recruiting volunteers and equipping them and developing them and leading them. Working to develop team unity (in-here goals) while prayerfully harvesting as many shoeboxes (aka Gospel Opportunities or out-there goals) as possible.

It's a lot.

When I think of it all sometimes I get overwhelmed. Maybe I shouldn't admit that. The big question is: Is God calling me to do this?  Because if He is then He will always make a way. He promises to "equip (me) for every good thing to do His will, working in (me) that which is pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ." (Hebrews 13:21 ASV)

I was challenged to pray through that question this week and I am asking Him to make me willing to be obedient whatever the answer.

Because...it's November!