“And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.” (Matthew 6:7-8)
Two Saturdays ago, I had one of those non-stop days. I got up early and had hours of intense office work to do. After that, I took a break from that to help Dee get the Christmas decorations up. After that, I switched to get some urgent outdoor items done before the Minnesota frozen tundra took over for the winter. I capped the day by switching back to the intense office work for a couple hours.
At about 9 pm I was ready to collapse in a heap when Dee said, “we have to get the Christmas shoeboxes put together so we can take them to church tomorrow”. After thinking about it for a minute, I reluctantly agreed. Thankfully, Dee had taken the lead on buying everything for 4 boxes (2 boys and 2 girls) but she wanted my input on filling the 2 boy boxes.
The first 3 boxes went fine, but things went south on the 4th and final box. It was recommended that each box include a “WOW!” gift and she had decided to buy a “Simon” game as one of those gifts. With space in the shoebox at a premium, we made the judgment call to remove the plastic wrapper around the game. For the next 30 minutes we were at a loss on how on earth to turn the thing off – if you so much as looked at it, the game noise would start blaring. With no off switch and putting it back in the mangled plastic wrapper not an option, Dee decided to look for something to encase it in. Expecting a fruitless search for hours to cap the ridiculously busy day, to my surprise, about a minute later she came back with a box from her office saying, “I think this will work perfectly.” Lo and behold it was a perfect fit. The Simon game dropped right in like it was made for it, and the incessant noise finally stopped. She capped it with, “you know for months I looked at that box in my office and kept saying to myself to throw it away, but something kept telling me not to.”
I wanted to weep as that is just how Jesus always works in our lives. He knew on Saturday, November 22nd, we were going to have one of our busiest days ever. At the end of that day, He knew we were going to be scrambling to put four Christmas shoeboxes together for kids we’ll never meet. And with the last one, He also knew we’d be hit with some incredibly annoying obstacle to overcome, but for months, He had tucked away the perfect solution right around the corner.