“You never know the power of these shoeboxes,” our guide at the Operation Christmas Child department of Samaritan’s Purse said. We had come to the beautiful campus of Franklin Graham’s ministry in Boone, North Carolina, and we had just missed the scheduled tour, but the gracious staff thought something could be arranged. “I’ll take you,” the friendly employee said to my husband, our son, his wife and me with a twinkle in her eye. We had already watched an informative video about the history of the ministry, and now we were excited to see how this part of it worked.
She went through the steps with us of how they opened the boxes, taking out any inappropriate contents (chocolate, liquids, glass, or military dolls), which were later donated to charities. “I want to tell you a story of one shoebox,” she offered. She told of how a woman had filled a shoebox with small articles and enclosed a note she had written, wishing the recipient a merry Christmas and explaining that she had sent the box to her in Jesus’ name. Then she closed with, “I don’t have any children of my own.”
It just so happened that the young girl who received the box was in an orphanage, her parents having been killed in a war. She had already told her caretaker that all she wanted for Christmas was a family. Together they wrote to the donor of the box, and more correspondence ensued, with the American woman eventually coming to meet the little girl. She ended up adopting her and taking her to live in America.
“We sent 650,00 shoeboxes from this warehouse,” our host said of the huge building. “I asked one of the personnel what that many shoeboxes looked like. He said if we stacked the boxes wall-to-wall and floor-to-ceiling, we would fill the warehouse twice.” Then she finished, “What are the chances that one box would go to the child who needed a mother from a woman who needed a child?” We agreed it was the providence of God. She had other stories of miraculous results of the shoeboxes. “Remember,” she stressed, “it’s not the contents of the box that matter. It’s the act of love that sends them, and what God can do with them.”
We left with a new appreciation of the work there and amazed at God’s orchestration of events in the ministry of His laborers. The aura of peace that seemed to surround the complex set in the beauties of His creation was almost holy. The verse comes to mind that says, “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills. From whence does my help come? My help cometh from the Lord, who made Heaven and Earth.” These spectacular hills and mountains certainly bore witness of their Creator.
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