"Where's The Boy"?

This morning, our family delivered our Operation Christmas Child shoeboxes(http://www.samaritanspurse.org/index.php/occ) to the collection tables at our church. Preparing shoeboxes, which has become an annual tradition for our family, began the first Christmas that Tonya and I were married. In the years before our first son was born, Tonya prepared a shoebox for a girl while I prepared one for a boy. But since our sons have been born, they have each prepared a shoebox for a boy their own age.

My favorite Operation Christmas Child story comes from a few Christmases back when, for the first time, we thought our older son understood what the shoeboxes were all about. We had taken him shopping for items for "the boy" he was preparing the box for. He had helped place the items he'd chosen in the shoebox (mostly things he would have wanted for himself) and then helped wrap the shoebox for "the boy". On the night we took the box to church to turn it in at the collection table, with boxes stacked high along the wall, our son asked, "Where's the boy?" Turns out that our son thought he was preparing a box that he would be personally delivering to "the boy" he had shopped for. He had brought his gift for "the boy". And in that moment, I began to experience Operation Christmas Child in an entirely new way.

Here's The Point: For years, when I had prepared a shoebox, I was preparing a gift for an unknown, never-to-be-seen child somewhere on the other side of the planet. But for our son, Operation Christmas Child was personal. He expected to meet "the boy" that he had prepared the box for. He had spent time and effort on the box because it was his gift for "the boy". It wasn't about the box, it was about "the boy".

That Christmas, because of my son, I was reminded how personal ministry truly is. That "the boy" who we send a shoebox to is a child who Jesus Christ gave His life for. That Operation Christmas Child shoeboxes are not simply a thing we do each Christmas. They're about reaching "the boy" with the love of Jesus.