When the World’s Problems become Your Problems

I'm sure I said this or something really close to it, as I sat in my living room in Rwanda reading about the Ebola outbreak in Uganda. What are the odds that out of all the countries in the world, the one making CNN headlines due to a highly contagious, incurable, DEADLY disease was the one we were going to? AND the one I was suppose to be leading a team in?

Yet, there I was facing world headlines instead of just reading about them online or hearing about them on the news, if I even heard them at all.

But last month a lot of things seemed to do that. You know,  hit me in the face instead of stay a nice safe distance away.

Let me explain.

It all started the minute or maybe the morning after we arrived in Rwanda. As I looked around the neighborhood I had just moved in to the night before, I felt like I had just stepped in to a commercial (if they had commercials) for charity:water.

You know, those yellow cans that they use in all ads and marketing? Well they weren't just "those yellow cans" now that I lived in a poor district in Africa. Now, as I looked around, they were the same cans that African women were carrying up and down the hill to bring water to their homes. And the African women were my neighbors, my friends, and my sisters in Christ. Oh, and those yellow cans were also the same cans that I was getting MY water from as well….

But then it wasn't just the yellow cans that brought reality to my front door.

It was the kids, too.

As soon as the kids in the neighborhood figured out where the muzugus (that's the word for "white person" in Africa) lived, they were at our front gate every single day. They followed us to church, played games with us, tackled us, loved us, and worshipped God with us.

They were also the same kids that desperately need sponsors so they can go to school and have their basic needs met. Your Compassion or World Vision child was no longer just a picture on a refrigerator, they were the children I held hands with everyday. Most of whom live in a one room home that is most likely smaller than your bedroom (with a family of 4 or more) and normally only eat 1 or 2 meals a day, if they eat at all.

I was so overwhelmed by the realities right outside my front door, it made me want to throw up my hands and say "It's too much." I wanted to pack up, go home, and act like I'd never seen what the world really looks like, because now, I have to do something about it….

I can't stare injustice in the face then simply turn and walk away. My heart won't allow it.

But then the question becomes, what do you do about it? There is so much need, so much hurt, so much pain, so much to do, where do I even begin? Where do we even begin?

The answer I've come up with is "I don't know."

All I do know is that I have to keep walking the path God has laid out in front of me. I need to give when He says give, love when He says love, sing when He says sing, and fight when He says fight. I know that God has a plan to redeem this world, He has a plan to care for His children, and He has a plan that's bigger than I can even fathom.

And in the end, all I can do is trust God.

So instead of throwing my hands up and walking away, I opened my front gate, walked outside, hugged all the little children, grabbed their hands, and walked down to church, because that's what God was asking me to do…

I can't solve all the world's problems, but I serve a God that can and WILL. So, I will continue to ask Him what role He wants me to play in feeding the hungry, loving the widows, clothing the poor, and seeing His kingdom come to earth. Then, I pray and pray often.
 
So what do you do when the world's problems become your problems?

Well, if it's the deadly Ebola virus, you run away to Kenya (that's where we are this month instead of Uganda).

And if it's anything else (okay and Ebola, too), you trust and obey.

Which reminds me of a song I used to sing when I was a little girl at church: