Weaning

"Spirit of God descend upon my heart. Wean it from earth; through all its pulses move." This hymn is stuck in my head these days and I've been thinking a lot about weaning.

I have three little grandsons who have all been weaned in the past few months. Each of them took a different route to that weaning and a different time schedule. Two of them did this pretty much on their own without a lot of fuss. Ah, but the other--he held on for a long time. He did not want to be weaned and it took some special tricks to get the job done.

I fear my heart is in that 'hard to wean' category. I cling so firmly to things of this earth--not so much to possessions but to achievement, to trying to earn my way to heaven (an impossibility, I know) and to my addiction for approval.  I've been praying about that and I think God may be answering my prayers in ways I don't even fully recognize.

Psalm 131:1-2 "O Lord, my heart is not lifted up; my eyes are not raised too high; I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me. But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother; like a weaned child is my soul within me."

The notes in my ESV study Bible point out the psalmist is saying that like a weaned child is content to just be in his mother's presence the psalmist is content to just be with God even when there are things he wishes God would explain that he can't understand.

The psalmist says he doesn't occupy himself with what he can't figure out. He just rests in God's presence.

I guess babies and children who are not weaned often have an ulterior motive when snuggling into their mothers' chests. Just being near her mother makes her root around and look for the milk mommy can give her.

Am I like that with God? Am I always just looking for His provision and not His presence? That's a heavy thought but one I don't want to turn away from.

And I'm sensing another weaning that may be happening. One that makes me really uncomfortable because I hate change.  I mean, I've only lived in two houses my entire life--the one I grew up in and the one we've lived in for all of our 45 years of marriage. I've lived in the same community all my life. I've attended only two churches and it took a clear act of God to move me out of the first one after 56 years. And I've been doing this Operation Christmas Child ministry since 1995.

I always thought I would pack shoeboxes until I died. And maybe I will. But what if God has some other plan for me in His kingdom? Am I willing to trust Him and move on if He calls in a different direction?

"Spirit of God descend upon my heart. Wean it from earth; through all its pulses move."

Burning Question

The burning question for my year has been: How do you discern between God's leading and the enemy's work of discouragement? When God intentionally reduced Gideon's army to only 300 God was merciful enough to give Gideon really clear guidance about that (I mean, AFTER the fleece incident--lol) But when you're constantly praying for guidance and get these zingers and God doesn't write His will on the wall for you, then it's challenging to know where those zingers come from and whether they have meaning.

This picture is from our packing party in 2010. That was our second packing party and we packed 12,600 boxes that year. Samaritan's Purse even sent a crew to film it. There were about 500 volunteers there that day. Lots of help. At that time the packing party got a lot of support from Grace Church and many volunteers came from Grace. It also got a lot of support from OCC. We'd actually had the first packing party in 2009 in response to a direct invitation from OCC so that made sense.

Now, almost 10 years later, things look much different. The packing party is not directly supported by Grace Church. They are gracious to offer us the use of their building, which is a HUGE investment, and they provide us with a storage container next to the church and a dumpster for our use the week of the packing party. I'm so grateful for these, believe me. But there is no direct effort to recruit volunteers from those Grace attendees, and despite doing all we could to recruit from the community we had fewer than 300 volunteers on the Saturday packing day this year.

And, little by little, I've been getting the message that maybe OCC would rather we didn't do this packing party either. This year there have been several reminders that packing parties are not the function of our area teams. And of course there's always the issue we've had of not seeing the $9 shipping donation for each of our boxes. So, if you don't have support from a church or from an OCC area team, then you're left with the option of organizing your packing party with an independent team. And that's fine--I mean, with God, even ONE is a majority. But that's the rub--are we "with God"?

I am constantly praying for God's guidance about whether to continue this large packing party. Year by year this is my prayer and the prayer of my team. Because, believe me, the LAST thing I want to do is attempt something this huge outside of the favor of the Lord.

So now I'm back to the question of guidance. Our storage container and extra warehouse space are full of items God has already provided and the beanie babies are literally raining in. I think it's safe to say God wants us to go ahead with this 2020 packing party. At least that makes sense to me.

But is He trying to tell us something for the future? Sometimes I wish God's guidance came in ways that were easier to discern. I'm pretty sure ending our large packing party will not result in more churches and groups being contacted or more team participation. Maybe I'm wrong about that, though.

Only God knows, and I really wish He would tell me.
PS--When I wrote this I completely forgot about the dream I had last night. I woke this morning from a dream in which we had our packing party in the basement fellowship hall of the church that used to be our central drop-off. I couldn't get an accurate total of the boxes we'd packed because each carton had a different number of boxes and no one had properly recorded the numbers.  I did know we were WAY below our goal and had tons of items left over. I kept trying to find someone to see if we could leave everything out and pack boxes the next day but I couldn't find anyone to ask. When I got back to the fellowship hall they were setting up for a craft fair. I woke up with a sense of doom and failure. And that was just the start of the day.