there comes a time each month where the reality sets in and it hits hard. these are people’s lives that i am seeing. this is their every day. this is their home. this is their family. this is them. and last month in honduras it hit me when i went to a center for teenage girls. some were there because they were abandoned. some because they had gotten into trouble. others because they were taken away from their families or prostitution or some other horrible situation. we come and hang out and start to sing worship songs in spanish. they sing along and it’s pretty lighthearted and i’m just there. i’m not really thinking about anything other than the fact that i don’t know any of these songs and how the girl on my right seems pretty funny. but then something changes. and i look around and girls are crying. and our contact encourages us to go pray for them. so i walk up and put my hand on her back and she turns and hugs me and holds on. and she weeps. and i pray. and i weep. and another girl comes wanting comfort. so there i am crying with these teenage girls, not knowing what their pain is, not knowing why they are there, but asking Jesus to be their comfort. to be their hope. and i think of my sisters. and my heart breaks even more. these are just a bunch of little moriah grace and naomi’s who have had their childhood and innocence robbed from them. it’s not fair. it’s not right.
here in guatemala it hit me about a week ago. our ministry this month is to do feeding programs in schools with children and to visit widows in the community. so all morning we had been visiting widows and talking with them, praying with the, listening to them. it was great. they are adorable. but we walked into one house and i looked around and saw the living condition of her family…surrounded by dirty dishes, she was sitting at the fire reheating old tortillas on the hot ashes. and i felt for her. we ask if we can pray for her, and she says yes, that all she wants us to pray for is that her children can go to school. and i prayed for her. and i cried for her. again, this doesn’t seem fair. i am about to leave her house and go eat a meal that i walk away from feeling full and content. all you want to ask the Lord for is an education for your kids? ahhh…how much do i take things for granted? it’s constant.
but here is what Jesus has been showing me. He longs for intimacy with His children. He wants me to draw near Him simply because i want to be near Him. so much of the time i come to Him for a purpose…to ask for something, to seek an answer, to “grow” spiritually, to be taught something. and those are good things. those are things that come from Him. but i think as a Dad, He just wants His kids to come to Him solely to be with Him. just to enjoy Him. to laugh with Him. to sing with Him. to cry with Him. to love Him and be loved by Him. He is showing me that He is my reality. He is the realest part of my life and is the realest part of their lives too. my circumstances look different, and my outward appearance looks different, but that doesn’t change their reality and truth of who He is. i’ve been reading til we have faces by c.s. lewis and a girl in the story is explaining her experience of seeing one of the gods, and her sister tells her it was probably just a dream. she replies and says, “and if it was a dream, sister, how do you think i came here? it’s more like everything that had happened to me before this was a dream!” i love that. and i believe that. it’s like everything i experienced before Jesus was just a false reality, just like a dream, a small taste. and when i came to know Him, and the more i am close to Him, the more real He is and the more real my life becomes. He’s amazing.
ah, fridays are for deep thoughts and pancakes.
