Backpacks

During the month of August, our radio station partnered with the ministry Orphan Outreach, to host a backpack drive for children in need. This was our first backpack drive ever. I naively set a mental goal of 200 backpacks for our event. I thought if we received that many, we would have done great for our first time at this type of event. As of today, our total of backpacks has reached 678. Amazing.

It was a great experience to watch the pile of backpacks grow each week. One listener donated two hundred backpacks. She went to the local Wal-Mart stores and literally cleaned them out of the backpacks left on the shelf. Half of the backpacks collected will go overseas with mission teams and be given to orphan children. The other half are going to the children in our community that are in need. It is always so humbling and wonderful to see the giving hearts of so many in our area.

I would often look at the piles of bags in our conference room. From a distance, they just look like a pile of bags. Material and padding sewn together to carry a load of supplies needed for an education. Those bags represent so much more though. Each bag will not only carry supplies for that education, but also represent a chance and an opportunity in life. In some countries of our world, children are not allowed to attend school unless they have a backpack. These backpacks represent a ticket to something so many only dream of…an education. They are desperate for it and they don’t take it for granted.

As I was packing some of the bags in boxes, I couldn’t help but notice the padded straps on the backpacks. They are to cushion the weight of the load that is being carried. If you have ever carried a heavy load, you know how important that cushion is. But what about the heavy load these children carry in other ways? The weight of imaginable circumstances are on the shoulders of so many of those children. It’s a weight that many of us have never known and will never know. They have a God that offers a cushion for that heavy load they carry as well as shelter, protection, and Salvation. One that tells us all that His yoke is easy and His burden is light (Matthew 11:30). However, many of them aren’t aware of this offer. Many don’t know who He is or have even been introduced to the One that made them in His image. And so, they carry that load alone.

If you look up the definition of yoke, you will find many different descriptions. Many are of the bar strapped across oxen used to carry a load. Here is one that I found particularly interesting in the way it relates to the backpacks. “A frame fitted to a person's shoulders to carry a load in two equal portions.”

The backpacks going overseas have something crucial for these children in need, and it isn’t just a padded device to carry the load of school supplies. A Bible in the language of that child, will be placed inside. Can you imagine what it would be like to be a child receiving that back pack? To receive an opportunity for an education, and an offer of the weight to be lightened off those tiny little shoulders in more ways than one?

Their stories of need don’t stop there though. It continues as the children wait to see Him in action through each of us. The bags are a start, but our work is not nearly done. Whether it is the child down the street, or a child overseas, they need to see Him in action, and it is our job to show them.