October 25th - two months today it is Christmas! I feel some panic at the thought, as time slips through my fingers like sea sand, and I also feel excitement for what Christmas means for us.It may be two months to Christmas, yet we are in the middle of the busyness of our Christmas season. M and I volunteer as co-ordinators for Operation Christmas Child on the North Shore (www.samaritanspurse.ca/occ/). This Christmas program of giving shoe box gifts to underprivileged children across the world captured our hearts twelve years ago. Through our church, we started by each packing a shoe box for a boy aged from ten to fourteen. For twelve years it has been a fun Christmas excursion to do our shoe box shopping.
One year, probably six years ago, the program wasn't co-ordinated at our church. We felt the loss of it as did others. The next year, M was committed to make it happen, so he stepped in and filled the gap. Once again our church participated in this project and we became Mr. and Mrs. Shoe Box.
Mr. Shoe Box is an administrative giant. Although he will tell you that he doesn't care for administration, he has an acute attention to detail. He is phenomenal at co-ordinating a project, making it run smoothly and ensuring that a job is done well. It wasn't too many seasons later that his contribution to this project for our church came to the attention of the regional co-ordinator to whom we delivered the 300 to 400 shoe boxes filled by our church community.
Before long M was asked to head up this program, not just for our church, but for the North Shore area which includes liaising with other churches, schools and businesses interested in participating. We deflected the request for one year, but the regional co-ordinator didn't let up and now, for three years, we have been the North Shore area co-ordinators for this project. Or to be perfectly honest, M is the co-ordinator and I'm his trusty assistant.
For us, Christmas happens in October and November as we distribute shoe boxes, get them back filled with gifts, box them in cartons and deliver 2,000 shoe boxes to the regional collection centre. One day we hope to distribute these shoe boxes to the orphans and children who have so little and to see the joy on their faces and the light in their eyes. Unfortunately, we don't see that happening for a while yet, but this December we will be heading to Calgary to be part of the next step of the process - sorting and checking the shoe boxes at the Samaritan's Purse warehouse. We're looking forward to it, even if it means two days of being Calgary cold.
Operation Christmas Child is named not only for the mammoth operation it is to get Christmas shoe box gifts to children across the globe but, more importantly, for the child who came to give each of us the greatest gift of all. And in two months we celebrate the coming of this child.
Indeed, it is a great blessing to give. And how wonderful it is too, when we receive a gift of love which fills us with hope and joy.
