Before outreach one Saturday night, we went around to various sick people in the village to encourage them and pray for them. At one point we split up and Jessie, Sarah and I got to meet precious Merita. She’s older than Gabe (she’ll be 5 in November), but smaller than Eden, no doubt.
Her grandmother is caring for her because the mother left and started a new life and family in South Africa. Apparently Merita was born normal, but started having problems when she was about a month old. She’s teeny tiny and has muscle contractures- almost like cerebral palsy- and she can’t see. My heart broke for her! I scooped her tiny frame up in my arms and we prayed and prayed over her. She was at church again on Sunday and you can bet I held her again and sang prayers over her. It just really got me thinking about how different her life would be in America.
What gives a person value? If sweet Merita is never healed and her entire life, she never contributes anything “helpful” to her family or community, is her life a waste? The thought of this makes us cringe! Or it should. We’d like to believe very highly of ourselves, declaring, “I would never think that!”
But the reality here is often that children are workers, babysitters- contributors very early on in life- because they have to be.
After a weekend of laying hands on the sick and the broken, I started to feel the weight of this broken, sin-infested world! My heart was heavy.
I certainly came on the Race for a perspective change- too often we are like the Israelites of Deuteronomy who grow fat in the land of plenty while others are desperate for the hope that we have. But I think the Lord is opening my eyes in a different way than I expected.
I wanted to see people healed and lives changed. I know God has the power and as his servant, I have authority. But He didn’t show up like that this time.
I saw brokenness and desperation- and He told me to concern myself with that which is eternal. Our earthly bodies tend toward entropy. Even the healthiest person grows closer to old age each passing day. But our spirits are intrepid- they (can) grow stronger and more heavenly. So that- the care and condition of our souls- is what really matters. If everything was fixed here on earth, there would be no need for a hope of something yet to come. But as children of the King, co-heirs with Christ, we live in eager expectation of that which we don’t see.
And that is why I’m crazy enough to live out of a backpack, sleep in concrete block houses and straw huts, eat ants and call the dirt my toilet.
