This might be the first year that I've actually started to think about and PLAN for Christmas earlier than, say, December 1. While I am really trying to keep from plugging in the Christmas Machine here, planning can be a useful tool for me. And one thing I plan to do is pack shoe boxes with my kids for Operation Christmas Child.

Opperation Christmas Child is a project of Samaritan's Purse, a nondenominational evangelical Christian organization providing spiritual and physical aid to hurting people around the world. Since 1970, Samaritan's Purse has helped meet needs of people who are victims of war, poverty, natural disasters, disease, and famine with the purpose of sharing God's love through His Son, Jesus Christ.

At Christmas one of the ways they do this is to deliver millions of shoe boxes, packed with gifts and supplies and love by countless families and individuals, to children in every corner of the world. Last year over 7.6 million boxes were delivered to children in 95 countries. And there were many more children who missed out because there just weren't enough boxes. That's where you can help.

Visit the Operation Christmas Child website and read the getting started section to find out how to pack your box and where you can drop it off in your local area. The national collection week is November 13-20. Be sure to give yourself enough time to get familiar with the project, go to the store to select your gifts, pack your box and drop it off in time.

I remember going to the store with my parents to spend my own quarters to buy Christmas gifts for less fortunate kids, probably in cooperation with Angel Tree. Picking out cool toothbrushes and coloring books and toys that I would have liked to have, just to wrap them up for some kid I never met had a lasting impact on me. In some ways it's a small thing, but it wasn't small to me. And I doubt it was small to the kid who opened my gift.

Please join me in planning ahead so this amazing opportunity doesn't pass us by. Your most important Christmas shopping could be done by the middle of November. Mine will be.  

“After 65 years, I have found the sister who I love,” Simon Glasberg said Monday in heavily accented English, his eyes filling with tears. “I can’t stop kissing her.”

To my own siblings spread around the world, I love you!

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Graham Tomlin today provides an excellent treatment of the Pope's recent speech at the University of Regensburg and the resulting uproar in the Muslim world. I actually read about a third of the speech - fascinating, if not slightly heady stuff - and have to agree with Graham: mystifying business. I don't think the blame for "sexing up" the incident is so much the issue as the fact that these things are issues now. Welcome to the 21st Century.

From what I've read, and also the pleasure of a very brief introduction, I have to say I really like Graham. Hey, a guy who taught theology at Oxford for 16 years and can still bring world headlines into focus so clearly is well worth a second listen.