A Precious Gift

Where has the time gone? It’s October! Fall festivals, cooler weather (hopefully), and TALLADEGA! What also begins this month is Operation Christmas Child. Thousands of shoeboxes will be collected throughout the country to give to kids, helping spread the Good News of Jesus around the world. I will actually be doing a few Missionz With Noe segments that have to do with Operation Christmas Child. In preparation for this, I ordered a DVD with many stories about what these shoeboxes mean to the children who receive them. One story caught my eye. A little boy from Africa was very fond of his grandmother, who had taught him about the Bible. This little boy loved reading out of his grandmother’s Bible. She passed away, and the little boy wanted a Bible for His own. He prayed for a Bible. When he received his shoebox, one thing struck his eyes. It wasn’t the cool toys or anything else. It was a BIBLE! Don’t tell me that happened to be coincidence. That was God at work!

The more I read God’s Word, the more precious it becomes to me. This past summer, I spent almost two hours at LifeWay, my favorite store, picking out a new Bible. I wanted something that would be easy to carry and easy to read and understand. I carry It and my notebook in my backpack to school. You never know when you’ll need to find an answer to life’s questions. 1 Peter 3:15 says “always be ready to give a reason for the hope that is in you.” I have the Bible app on my phone, but I prefer a physical copy. I don’t want my Bible to be low on battery.

This past month in Kidz Kingdom, we studied about God’s Word. I probably learned as much as the kids. It reminded me of a song, which we performed during Kidz Worship, that I remember from VBS 2008 called “The Word”. It was written by one of my favorite artists ever, Jeff Slaughter. The song mentions how the Word is perfect truth, is what we should cling to, is unbreakable, and is unshakable. One of my favorite parts is the bridge of the song where it states, “Page after page It teaches me, day after day It speaks to me, and leads me in the way of righteousness.” I feel that is so true. There are some days I read and don’t feel like I got something out of what I read. Later, though, God used what I had read days, even weeks prior for a certain situation for my life.

God’s Word is alive! It’s not just a book. It’s THE BOOK! I mean it is the best-selling book in history. I know I have taken having a Bible for granted, and I know that shouldn’t be the case. There are people in Africa, China (Check out the Missionz With Noe Facebook page for upcoming video interviews about giving out Bibles in China), and many other places where people long for their own Bible. As Christians, it's our job to help spread the Word. It can be your neighbor, or it can be someone from another part of the world. We were all commanded in Matthew 28 to go. What are you waiting for? Let’s go!