Loving Children You’ll Never Meet

Loving Children You’ll Never Meet

Wherever your treasure is, there the desires of your heart will also be.

Matthew 6:21

Brenda approached me four years ago, asking if the children’s ministry program at our church would like to participate in Operation Christmas Child by packing shoe boxes filled with a mixture of necessities that would then be sent all around the world. Of course I responded with a resounding yes!

What I didn’t know was that Brenda is pretty much an Operation Christmas Child shoe-box professional. She knows how to make every last square inch of a shoe box useful and spends the entire year gathering items to be tucked into the boxes—items that will benefit not only the child who receives them but also that child’s entire family. Toothbrushes, pencils and paper (with a pencil sharpener), soap, toys—these all find a place in the shoe box, along with a handwritten note from the child sending the gift.

In early November, Brenda takes over our Sunday school classes, showing videos and sharing explanations of how these packages make their way into the hands of children across the globe, many of whom have never before received a gift. She brings what can be an abstract concept to life for our kids, and we then spend a few Sunday mornings packing and wrapping shoe boxes. Our church subsidizes some of the supply costs and covers postage, allowing our kids to pack a towering pile of shoe boxes as part of the experience.

Brenda has overseen this project with our church’s kids every year for the past four years, but she has been running this quiet campaign in her own family for decades. The time, money, and effort she has poured into what has to be hundreds upon hundreds of shoe boxes over the years leave no doubt that the desire of her heart is to reach out to kids all around the world with the message of Jesus through a shoe box full of gifts.

The question I’ve begun asking myself is what my budget and finances reveal about the desires of my heart. Do they reveal a heart overflowing with generosity that extends beyond the walls of our church? Do they reveal Christ’s influence on my priorities? Or do they reveal that I have work yet to do? This is convicting, hard stuff. But Scripture is clear: the way we spend and handle money reveals what is most important to us.

—Julie

— Today’s Act of Kindness —

Volunteer to buy items or help assemble packages for kids who lack basic supplies.