I have always thought that you could tell a lot about a person by looking at their hands. Eyes may be the window to the soul but the hands are the indicators of character. This month as we served at El Shaddai—an orphanage on top of a mountain isolated from the world in the middle of Swaziland—we were assigned a buddy. The first time I met Nicolas, he looked as if he were afraid to be excited to have a buddy. He took my hand and led me to a bench so we could sit and talk. As we sat I held his hand in my and studied it. I knew his story because we read it in biographies given to us by our host, but on his hands I saw it. His eight year old hands were small and rough and his palms were scared with penny-sized, jagged callouses. I could see the five years at the orphanage on his hands; the labor in the fields and hard play on the jungle gym that left his hands rough enough to catch on silk, the meals of porridge and greens in his slender fingers, the poverty in his cracked dry skin, the trips and falls in the little scars here and there, the love of outdoors in the dirt under his nails. His hands were hard and firm because he had to be. His fingers were slender and lithe matching his rapscallion spirit. His hands were strong, holding on to anything they could catch, like the next monkey bar or the hand of anyone he met. I looked at his hands and it hurt, it hurt not to be able to take them and make them soft, make them children’s hands again.
He has such character and joy despite his situation despite being left to die by someone who was supposed to love him. He loves to dance and be a complete ham, he loves to joke and laugh and he wants to be a super hero. As I would watch him fly across the monkey bars beaming, my heart was breaking, as he laughed hysterically at me attempting to beat him in a race, my heart was breaking. “How could they look at you, spend any time with you, and not love you, not want you?” was something I asked myself, I asked God every time I looked at his sweet eager face and his worn leather hands.
The month I spent with my Nicolas taught me a lot about the heart the Lord has for his children. From the moment I first met him, I loved him. God showed me through Nick that he wants us to love each other in a way that is intense and purposeful. That we need to take care of those who can’t because those are the ones that will change your life and witness His grace to you. I saw the love God has for all of us in that little boy. I never thought I could love anyone I wasn’t related to that much but I think that’s the point, we should love each person we meet regardless of who they are to us but rather who they are to the Lord. I mean who was this child to me that I should love him and who am I to God that he should love me? But here we are loving and being loved for no other reason than God saying we are worth it in His eyes. I thought that spending a month at an African orphanage would cause such upheaval in my relationship with God and I was right. I understand so much more how He loves me and wants me to love others.
