It has been hard trying to find the words to write since being here in our first month on the field. I am currently on a team with eight other teammates: JoMo, Kevin, Josh, Amy, Allie, Destiny, Erin, and Chelsea. Our mornings consist of prayer and worship before working at the orphanage in the afternoons.
On our first day to the orphanage my heart was bursting with excitement and nervousness to enter in. As we walk in to have our first meeting, we are interrupted by a newborn baby being brought in, wrapped up, having just been found…abandoned. The baby’s form can hardly be made out in the sea of blanket it is enveloped in. It becomes real just exactly where we are that day. A building full of babies and children who have been left. Who are deemed abandoned. My heart breaks and feels the sting of what they are being deemed as.
Typically half of us head upstairs to help start feeding the other babies while the other half stays with the older children downstairs. Being the only English speakers at the orphanage, we decide to give the babies names that day. Some of the names are quite cute and match the personalities of the babies, while others are more of a proclamation of what we hope for them. It may seem small to be speaking new names over them, but I believe it represents a greater redemptive hope. Sometimes it looks like holding the sweet babies, telling them they are safe and loved while feeding them or holding the toddlers in our laps and singing songs to the ones who are blind or cannot speak.
There is one baby in the corner crib in the room full of babies who is blind and has a tumor on his face. The back of his head is flat from staying in his crib and not being held. On the second day, my teammate, Josh, is holding this boy and decides to give him a name, Nike (n-ee-kay), in Greek meaning “victory.” We are in a place where we are not allowed to speak of Jesus so our songs, prayers, and new names are being gently whispered and sung over the many in the orphanage.
This is where I have to believe He hears. This is where I press into the truth that Our God is a God who loves to reclaim, redeem, and rename the things broken on this earth. If I had not seen this in my very own life, maybe I would be more skeptical. There is great power in the way the Lord renames and redeems us as His own. From a sinner to a saint, from lost to found, from abandoned to beloved daughter. As I have experienced His great love and grace in renaming these in my own life, I know it is His heart for not just me but for every soul.
At times something may seem hopeless, utterly abandoned, even defeated. In those times, in the deepest parts of my soul, I feel it is God’s heart whispering His victorious love covering it all. As He speaks, He speaks victory over all of those parts. Since training and being here, I’ve wondered this…what if we actually grasped this concept? What if we were believers who actually walk in this truth? The truth that as His ambassadors, as His children, we have His authority to step into a hopeless situation and sing songs of truth, rename the broken, pray mighty prayers and claim the victory.
