I wanted to cry, I wanted to break down and weep when I first saw all of them but I couldn’t, not in front of these kids…
On Saturday morning my team and I participated in a support group called “Hope for Life” at Lighthouse Church here in Mutare.
This support group is unlike any I’ve heard of, because it’s a support group for children living with HIV/Aids.
When we first entered the room these children are like any other child you would see-perfectly healthy with a promising future, but then you begin to notice: their skin has unique pigmentation showing the virus they live with, you begin to hear the coughing, the sniffling, the wheezing. You begin to realize that they are sick- all the time- and there really isn’t any “getting better” for them.
And that’s when tears begin to well in my eyes and I forced myself not to cry.
One of the church volunteers did a Bible devotion for these children, she read from Psalm 139.
For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.
My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place,
when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed body;
all the days ordained for me were written in your book
before one of them came to be.
How precious to me are your thoughts,God!
How vast is the sum of them!
Were I to count them,
they would outnumber the grains of sand—
It was hard for me to grasp– to wrap my head around– the fact that this woman was declaring that these children, though sick, are still indeed fearfully & wonderfully made. That they were created in their mother’s womb by the hand of God, and that they are nor ever could be an accident.
And then I asked myself,
“Would I believe that of myself if I were in their circumstance?”
No, I wouldn’t.
I was convicted as I looked upon their sweet faces, “How often have I complained? How often have I wished my body was formed differently?” “Do I truly believe that I am fearfully & wonderfully made?”
No, I don’t…
or I didn’t.
But these children, so precious to God and, even in the short hours I spent with them, precious to me, opened my eyes to the reality that
ALL of us are fearfully & wonderfully made.
Suddenly all the insecurites melted away, the worries of what I looked like or smelt like or what I was wearing vanished because the truth is:
We are beautiful, precious, and loved in God’s eyes, in Christ’s eyes.
I am beautiful, precious, loved in Christ’s eyes.
These children are, without a doubt, beautiful, precious, and LOVED in Christ’s eyes.
That's the truth- and there is no point in believing anything else.
