I mentioned in my last post that two of our bags had decided to stay in Paris and skip the flight to Budapest. One of those was my guitar. If a bag was going to be lost, this was probably the easiest one to deal with. I would obviously rather go without my guitar then for someone not to have clothes to wear for the week. In fact, I was able to use a guitar that was at the church where my camp was being held, so I didn’t suffer too much.
Of greater concern was the bag we had started calling “The Craft Bag.” I’m not a craft guy – but I’m told that you can’t have a Bible camp without making cute little crafts and in order to make cute little crafts you have to have lots of supplies such as paper and glue. The turkey pictured above was one of the crafts we were planning to make and I had spent several hours before our trip cutting out pairs of turkey feet that would be used. It was a running joke that because of the labor I had put in, it was very important to me that these turkeys make it to Ukraine and get put together.
But we had also gathered and prepared a lot of craft supplies for the camps so that we could bring them with us. We had heard that there had been multiple problems with lost luggage on earlier trips, so someone smarter than me decided that we should carry two days worth of crafts in our various carry-on bags in case something happened. (Since the turkeys were day one’s craft, they thankfully arrived safely in Ukraine.) But we also had the “Craft Bag,” which was a bag full of supplies for the rest of the week that weighed 48 pounds. Just like my guitar, this bag never made it to Ukraine. It did finally get delivered to Budapest, just in time for us to claim it and check it again for the flights home. (All of our luggage arrived safely and on time in Greensboro.)
Once the craft supplies we had carried on ran out early in the week, our craft leaders had to improvise. Our host missionary had some suitcases of supplies that had been left by previous teams and every morning our leaders would look through and come up with a craft idea or two for that day. I was amazed at how they figured out what they would make each day and we were all amazed at how God provided everything that they needed for all of the kids and all of the crafts for the entire week. By the end of the week, no one could remember exactly what was in the Craft Bag anyway.
There was an important lesson that I believe God was teaching us by keeping the Craft Bag from making it to Ukraine. So often, we try to accomplish what God calls us to do in our own power and with our own resources. We limit what we can think we can accomplish to the supplies that we already have on hand. We had packed a 48 pound suitcase full of supplies that we thought we had to have so the kids could make crafts and enjoy Bible camp. God was teaching us that we didn’t need the Craft Bag, we only needed him. He would provide whatever we needed in order to do what he wanted us to do. And he did.
Paul said it this way in Phil. 4:19: “My God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.” Never fall into the trap of thinking that you can’t accomplish God’s purposes because you don’t have the intelligence, or the money, or the supplies, or the time, or the capacity. If God calls you to something, he will provide what you need to finish it. Sometimes, he will use what you’ve already got. But often, he wants to provide out of his abundant generosity so that you trust in him rather than in yourself.
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