I’ve had this blog post on my mind for a long time. By a long time I mean for about a month, since our first week in El Salvador. Our ministry was with an organization called Sus Hijos (His Children) which focuses primarily on the betterment and discipleship of the children in the city of San Salvador. We worked in several different orphanages, a halfway house, with teen moms, and in the prisons. At one of the orphanages the work we did was holding babies. I’m not even kidding. A section of the orphanage was dedicated to babies ranging from newborns to two years old. We would pick them up and hold them, feed them and play with them. Our very first day we helped take the toddlers to the dentist.
On one of our first days there though something struck me. I was walking around the building and I could figure it out but something was wrong. What was wrong with this orphanage? It was a nice facility. Brightly painted with cartoon characters with nice cribs, strollers, and plenty of toys. The staff seemed caring and attentive. And yet something seemed off but I could quite place it. And then it hit me:
It’s too quiet
None of the babies were making noise. One would cry occasionally but all the babies that were at the age where they should be starting to talk or at least babble laid there with blank stares. Some of them would laugh when you tickled them but the majority were silent. The children were grossly under stimulated. I was talking to one of our hosts about it and she said that blank stare is very symptomatic of kids who grow up in centers. Even the children of the teen moms, who had a lot more one on one attention, were still very quiet.
At the time I was reading a book called When Helping Hurts. The basis of the book is giving practical tools for doing charity and outreach work in a way that does not further harm the people that you are trying to help. This idea of “best practice” was and still is very much on my mind. One of the major problems that orphans face in their child and adulthood is attachment issues. When they lack consistency in the people in their life it impacts their ability to make strong relationships later in life. Knowing this, I began to wonder just how helpful it was for us to hang out with these kids for one or two hours a couple times a week. Was this really “best practice” for these children or were we contributing to the struggles they would face later in life? To me the stakes seemed even higher in this situation because we are talking about the life of a child. It was a way more serious issue.
This continued to be on my mind for the remainder of our month in El Salvador. This question of our effectiveness in the ministry we were doing. Was it really valuable? Were we helping or hurting?
During teamtime one night my teammate Harmony was sharing her thoughts about the ministry and one thing she said really stuck with me. She talk about the idea that nothing given to the Lord is ever wasted. Even when we might feel ineffective or like we are just throwing pebbles into the ocean, if it is dedicated to God it is not in vain.
This does not diminish the need for “best practice” and every ministry setting should be drown in prayer. However when we are doing things with the Lord and seeking Him and what will glorify Him most in the situation He will lead us to move in the way He would have us move.
Once more, it important to remember when “giving things for the Lord” that we are sure to listen to God’s direction. Yes, anything done in God is good. But wisdom and discernment are virtues of the spirit just as much as compassion and empathy. I’ve heard it said that it’s easy to have a heart for brokenness. For example – very few people, regardless of their religious affiliations, enjoy seeing abject-poverty, broken relationships, or purposeless lives. What’s harder than having a heart for brokenness is having a mind for brokenness. And the practice which helps us fuse the heart and mind together is the excercise of abridging our hearts’ desires, and minds’ ideas, before the Lord. When viewed from this perspective, my friend Harmony is 100% correct, “nothing given to Lord is ever wasted”
Whether that be holding babies, serving meals, or smiling to people on the street. Nothing given to the Lord is wasted.
One of my favorite things about World Race blogging is that there is this wonderful community of people on your squad who are walking through these experiences right beside you and are willing to read and edit and make more complete what you have to say. Thank you to Jed Barnes for his thoughts and edits on this story.
