Though I love the activity, the work, the travel, the companionship of 1,000 other volunteers as obsessed (uh ... passionate) about OCC as I am, that's really not what is on my mind this morning, just hours from leaving for the airport. I am thinking this morning about being hopeless.
We live in a country with such abundance. I've been in several conversations just in the past week about what it is to be in need. I like to think that I can grasp what it is to be needy, to be truly hopeless, but I cannot, and neither can you! I hear excuse after excuse from people every year about why they don't pack shoeboxes for children who live in some of the most forgotten parts of our world. "We have so much need here in the United States." "There are so many children here in our own country that we need to help." Yes, those things are definitely true!
What I am talking about is true hopelessness. There are children, 3, 4, 5 year olds, living on their own because their parents have died of AIDS; 12, 13 and 14 year olds out on the streets, or in garbage dumps, scrounging for food for themselves and their families because war has completely ravaged their village and there is nothing left; children of all ages who are sick themselves from diseases easily cured by antibiotics here in the States, but a death sentence in Africa, living out their remaining days in a "hospital"; tiny boys and girls in orphanages who have been left, and are unloved -- with no solution for any of these circumstances. No government program; no church doing a "mission project" to help; no community raising money to meet the need ... hopeless.
I received this verse in an email this week: Psalm 10:17, "Lord, You know the hopes of the hopeless. Surely You will hear their cries and comfort them." God knows where every shoebox is going - every single one! He has a plan for how the needs of each single child will be met. Will the items in the box change the physical circumstances of these children? No, of course not. But God will use those items to bring hope ... HIS hope. Just knowing that, finding comfort in that, the peace that comes from knowing HIM, is what will change each child.
Hopeless to hopeful. Wow!
Pray for those of us traveling today. Pray for each and every single shoebox we will process in the next few days. Pray for hundreds of thousands of little boys and girls who KNOW the definition of hopeless, that they will meet my Jesus in their shoebox and find freedom, peace, love and HOPE in Him.
"... how can they believe if they have not heard, and how can they hear if no one preaches ..."
(Rm. 10:14)
Use me, Lord, to preach, so every child will hear, and every child will believe!!!!!!
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