I looked down at my hands as we walked to catch a bus home. They were a whole new shade of brown. Every ounce of common sense in me desired to wash my hands. I pulled out some hand sanitizer and passed it out to my teammates, only to have the hand sanitizer move the dirt around on our hands. As I tried really hard to not touch anything and had a moment of longing for running hot water, I also had a moment of realizing that where I just had been was where Jesus lives.
We had just spent the past few hours hanging out in the slums.
I had been put on kid ministry. While some of my teammates went door-to-door praying for people in the slums, myself and one other teammate, hung out on the riverbank playing with the slum kids.
When we had first weaved our way through the slums, there are a few things you immediately realize. First there is a stench, a combination of sewage and rotting garbage. Then you realize the filth that many people call home. They live in homes made of whatever materials they can find and trash is everywhere.
I began to silently pray to my Father for his Spirit to reveal itself to me in this place of poverty and sadness.
When we got to the riverbank and saw the group of kids playing, the kids immediately rushed us. The first kid who ran at me was a little boy who aggressively grabbed me. His clothes and skin were caked in dirt, his cheeks were rashed and scabbed and I immediately retracted from his grasp. Horrified at the mess of germs and dirt that were about to be covered on me. But in that instance I heard God speak.
“These are my children, just like you these children are my beloved. I live here amongst these children. When you serve these people you also serve me.”
And my arms reached down and picked up the little boy, spinning him around. And for the next thirty minutes I got dizzy out of my mind spinning this kid and throwing him up into the air.
Today I held naked dirty toddlers, was tackled into trash filled dirt, and today I hung out with Jesus.
My heart broke tenfold today in the slums. To imagine that the dozens of children we spent time with will grow up living in the conditions we saw and experienced, is mortifying.
I left the slums worried about when I would get to wash my hands. Those kids may not wash their hands under running water for months. To wash their hands or any part of their body, they have to fill up a can of water and carry it home, dump it into a bowl and wash their hands in water that should not be drinkable.
But they get to live intimately with Jesus. Jesus hung out with the tax collectors and the beggars and those who are outcast by society. Jesus got his hands dirty everyday.
Jesus says that the poor will be blessed in heaven.
I am blessed to get to serve Jesus by serving these people. To get to get my hands dirty alongside my Savior is something I want to do everyday. I want to do it everyday not just in the slums but with my squad, with my family, with the people in my community in America, with everyone I meet.
I came on the race to serve alongside Jesus, to get dirty with Him. Today I felt Jesus’ presence more clearly than ever before. I went to the place where Jesus lives, I know today I got to work intimately with my Savior. That’s what the World Race is all about. That’s what I want my life to be about, intimately loving and serving my Father in heaven.
