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From an early age we learn about cause and effect. Universal lessons like, “For every action there is a reaction”, and “if you punch your sister she will cry and then tell on you” are among our first experiences. And for some things, it is easy to tell what is a cause and what is an effect.  But, is it easy for everything?

What about gratitude?  

Is gratitude something you have, that causes something else to happen; or is it the effect of some circumstance - like an unexpected gift?  

In my head, I am settled that gratitude is a cause.  It comes first, it is a choice; but when I look at my life, it is clear that often, my behavior would suggest that I believe gratitude only to be applicable when my circumstances are positive. I live as though it is a result or an effect of something else, something that I have no choice over.

It is in this behavior that I am struck with the fact that I miss so much simply because I don't choose gratitude first.  I choose to focus on scarcity, not on the abundance that I have in Christ.  I choose to think about the challenge of what I don’t have, instead of the great riches I do have because the Father loves me.  

It is an audacious command for Paul to tell us in 1 Thessalonians to “...Rejoice always; pray without ceasing; in everything give thanks, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.”

Because to rejoice always and to pray always and to give thanks always requires us to see rejoicing and gratitude as something we have control over; a choice.  

A choice that is not connected to circumstance, jealousy, opinion or the feeling of being victims to our surroundings.

As we start the holiday season, our choice to be grateful will be pressed over and over again.  We’ll be tempted to think about what we don’t have, how we aren’t good enough, and how difficult things are.  Even in our shortcomings, we have a choice to allow Him to make our weakness strong.  This isn’t a choice we make once, but one that we constantly make.  

So, let us go in to this season focused on the abundance we have in Christ, and let’s make gratitude the cause that God uses in our lives to transform us.

As the new coordinator for the MCC Food Pantry, I have been busy with organizational tasks. Thankfully, the Food Pantry’s team of helpers contribute time and ideas to making this easier! We purged the pantry of food items past the “Best By” date. This left a lot of empty shelves so we put out a request for food to restock. Within a week, the Youth Group gathered enough food through the Scavenger Hunt to restock the pantry. What a blessing to get such a quick response to this need!

The next step:  find clients in need of food.  I was still thinking about how to go about this when God brought a person to us! A fellow team member and I were doing some re-organization in the pantry area. I said, “I’ll go ask Elizabeth about whether we should keep that item or not.” Footsteps on the stairs: Elizabeth appeared then, with a man who’d dropped by the church seeking help.

            “Whatever you ask for in prayer with faith, you will receive.” Matthew 21:22

What extraordinary timing! Mr. M. was passing through the area on his way to relocating in another state. He had a colorful--and violent--history. Yet I felt comfortable talking with him and getting to know his story. He stated that he was a new Christian and wanted to change his life. I encouraged him to seek support when he reached his destination; to get involved with a local church. We made a connection. He expressed astonishment at the help offered to him. Then he packed his motorcycle saddlebags with food and drove off.

This experience provoked some questions for me:  By not confronting Mr. M's story inconsistencies, did I reinforce the concept that church people are naive and easily manipulated?  Should I have been confrontive? Or witnessed more, explained more...how does one handle drop-in clients anyway?

God provided both a client and a learning experience at exactly the right time!

Click here to learn how you can serve the food pantry and what kind of donations are needed!

I learned about Operation Christmas Child 15 years ago. I was at McDonald’s with my cousin’s wife, Lisa. Our boys were playing on the red and yellow plastic slides and she took the Happy Meal doll and said she was going to put it in the box for “her” girl.

Knowing she had three busy boys (at that time 7, 6, & 4) I asked her what she meant and she explained the idea behind the Samaritan’s Purse ministry, Operation Christmas Child. I loved the idea! What a great thing for Gabriel and I to do together – buying small toys and sending them to a child who would otherwise have nothing to open! Including a Gospel tract in their language!

For several years Gabriel and I packed shoeboxes for children we’d never meet, in countries we had never been to, praying these small gifts would bring them joy and into a relationship with their Savior. Later, as I worked with teen girls, we included them on shopping and packing expeditions too. At the time I saw it as a fun project that hopefully introduced children to Jesus. 

Then I was invited to hear a guest speaker at the Operation Christmas Child “Kick-Off”… and it changed the way I viewed the ministry completely! The speaker's name was Nadia, and she was from Russia. She described life in the Russian orphanage as bleak, lonely, and at times horrific. The workers, she said, would force the children to fight each other and place wages on who would win. She was unloved, uncared for, and saw no future for herself.

But then one day, a woman showed up with shoeboxes filled with gifts! Nadia couldn’t believe it! Pencils, hair clips, toys, all for her? But what was most important to her was a toothbrush. She finally had her own toothbrush, one she didn’t have to share! After the woman left, the workers took the nicer things from the children, but Nadia hid her toothbrush.

Even more importantly, the workers couldn’t take from her the realization that there was someone on this planet who actually cared about her.

Why would someone care about her? Nadia was perplexed.

And it was at that time that she read the Gospel and learned about the Savior that loved her and that His love was so overpowering that it changed everything!

Like her, He had been beaten, abused, and abandoned. But He forgave and she needed to forgive, and the Holy Spirit brought life to her!

We all were weeping by the time she finished.

I wept for the neglect and pain; I wept for a glorious God who intervened.

After hearing Nadia I wanted to be a part of this in a way that I never had before. This was no longer just a fun, teachable moment; there is a real Gospel opportunity here.

Now, I don’t know about you, but a toothbrush is a really easy thing for me to come by. I have one to clean jewelry, one to scrub tile, and seem to acquire them. The practical thing that changed about my shoeboxes was that now every single one of them has a toothbrush, and when I have packing parties, every shoebox has to have one. It’s an iron-clad rule.

But even more so, now we pray before we shop. We pray as we pack. I pray throughout the year for who may have received the box. We include notes in the box – notes of love, hope, encouragement, and of course, Scripture.

It seems so small – just a shoebox filled with small toys and sent with a prayer - we may not know on this side of eternity whose hands He places them in – but I know He hears prayer and I know He is able to take a toothbrush and transform lives.

Click here to learn more about Operation Christmas Child. MCC will have shoeboxes available the next two Sunday's in-between services! Pick one up, fill it, pray over it and return it to the church by Sunday, November 5th and we will deliver it to a dropoff location!

Today as I left work, I set my out-of-office reply, on nine different email accounts, to read “I will be out of the office until further notice with no access to email, telephone, radio, or Morse-code communications.” This message is posted once a year (when possible); and it is liberating.  My leave form, a formal legal contract between myself and the US Government, has my Leave Destination listed as a trailhead (and, no, I am not going to tell you which one).

By the time you read this, I will be in the middle of the Pecos National Wilderness sitting the hurricane deck of an Idaho mountain horse I have never seen, exploring God’s Creation as He meant it. In a tangible, first-hand, sight-smell-sound-spiritual, sort of way. 

For the next seven days, I will commune with nature, talk to Jesus, make memories, and continue a tradition as old as the stories of my family.

My Grandfather’s church was a mountain. Or a marsh. Or a meadow.  He was a scientist. A wildlife biologist and a conservationist.  He believed that religion got in the way of Creation and therefore refused to step inside a church, save for weddings and some funerals.  His cathedrals were alpine cirques in which Rocky Mountain Sheep and marmots caroused and played.  His altars were the snow-capped Wind River and Medicine Bow Mountain Ranges of his native Wyoming.  He sought God where God was; and somehow he understood that Jesus was his Salvation.

Thus he taught me, in his way, to respect the Creator, to understand our Dominion, and to conserve that which is granted us by Divine Proclamation. 

I have recognized, though, that I do need religion. Still, whenever life allows, I head to the high country.  God’s Country.  This year I had the fortune to draw an elk tag, along with my brother-in-law from Idaho, in the Pecos Wilderness.  Tomorrow, I meet Alan and his pack mules and we will go where the job cannot find me.  We will camp and explore and frolic (yes, I said frolic, as if I were a child; for that is how I will feel - giddy and liberated).

I will use this hunt as an excuse.  Not only a selfish excuse to leave our crazy world behind for a little bit, but also as a spiritual excuse to be closer to my Creator and my Savior.  When my church is the mountain, there are no emails; there are no phone calls; there are no interruptions; there are no excuses.

I must face my God as who I am, for I am stripped of the trappings of busy-ness and modernity.

I am humbled by those things greater than myself and I am forced to reflect on my shortcomings and my strengths.  Generally, the list of the former is significantly longer than the latter.

This is how my family has lived, worked, and worshipped for generations. I learned these things from my Granddad, an unlikely minister, as he had learned them from his. So it has been passed, commune with the Creator, from generation to generation.  And so, too, shall my children learn of His wonder, within His Splendor.

They will, with God’s Grace, learn the power of walking away in order to walk toward a personal relationship that I can only tell them about but they must experience.

Just a few short months ago while serving on a 31 person team in Poland, I saw God provide in big ways! God showed me that when I remained faithful to Him, no matter how hard the situation seemed, or how many doors were shut, He would always be faithful to open other doors to make a way for the gospel to be shared!   

During our third week in Poland, my U.S. team and our Polish friends split into three groups so we could reach people in different areas. Our focus was evangelizing through performing dances, and skits, a Vacation Bible School (VBS), and prayer.  We were blessed with opportunities to share the gospel in city squares, churches, at a school and a senior home!

During one VBS, God reminded us of the importance of staying faithful to Him even when the situation seemed disappointing. One day it was raining so hard that we had to go inside. Definitely not according to our plan! Luckily, there was a museum close by that we could use.

The problem was not only weather, but attendance. With the exception of the little brother of one of my team-mates, there were no children. We were disappointed and discouraged by the turnout, or lack thereof. But, by God’s grace, one of our Polish friends encouraged us to carry on, trust in God, and to serve Him with a cherished heart. So we went on with our plan, not sure what would come of it, but trusting that God would use it for His glory.

We played games, sang songs, taught a couple lessons, and just plain had fun!

We thought that was the end of the story but soon realized that God had other plans!

What we didn't find out until after we finished that afternoon was that the woman in charge of the museum would offer to call a few places to see if they wanted us to come. Those phone calls opened the door for invitations to both a senior home and a school!

If we hadn't persevered through the disappointment of a low turnout for our VBS on that rainy and discouraging day, we would not have had the opportunity to be invited to those places! God opened the doors for us as we remained faithful to Him. If we had not trusted God, we may have missed those opportunities completely.

Later, during the fourth week of our trip, the Polish kids returned to their homes and the U.S. team and I headed north to Mikolajki. While there we were blessed to minister to kids and teens at a Catholic camp for four days. One particular lesson we shared was about the Colors. We taught them that black represents Sin, red represents Jesus' blood, white is for His blood making us pure and clean, green is for our growth in Him, and yellow is for Heaven. It’s likely a lesson every Sunday school teacher knows and has taught numerous times but this time, the lesson would be as powerful for the teachers as it was the students.

As we finished teaching the students what the colors meant and began passing out the colored beads to make bracelets, we realized that there was only a handful of the green beads. We weren’t sure if there would be enough for every student but decided to hand out all we had and see how God would provide. At the end, after passing out the materials, we noticed that there were still plenty of beads left...we thought, "Wait. Weren't there only a handful to begin with?” Yet now, after passing out beads to all the kids and making our own bracelets there were still a LOT left! More than a handful for sure! It was a small but precious miracle from God. This moment reminded me of the Bible story where "Jesus feeds the five thousand."  Each color we taught and each lesson we shared was important and God did not want to leave a single one out! Just as God yearns for us to grow in Him and loves deep relationships, He provides for all of our needs. What a reminder that day was of His provision for us.

Throughout this trip I was continually reminded about God’s grace, provision and faithfulness. While teaching others about God’s love, I became the student in lessons that I will never forget.

Click here to learn about all of MCC's missions programs!