As I sit here and write this in the Hotel Himalaya Yoga, Kathmandu, and know that we will only be in Nepal for another fifteen hours, my chest feels heavy, as if a large rock has somehow lodged itself deep down within it. It is not a foreign feeling for me, as I have felt this type of feeling many times before, but it is an abnormal context for feeling it. In the past, I have felt this type of gut-sinking feeling over relatives and love interests, but never during ministry, and never over people with whom I had no prior long-standing relationship.
One of my themes for this month has been the goings-on of the heart. I am realizing, more and more, that the condition of my heart is of tantamount importance and that an outpouring of good works (or lack thereof) is merely a representation of the condition of my heart. This should be obvious to me, because the Bible mentions this idea of works being the evidence of faith (think James 2) again and again. In my day to day actions, however, I am not sure whether I act as if I truly understand this principle.
Sometimes, God speaks to me in the weirdest of ways. During the first week of the month, we watched Robin Hood with the children on their day off of school. There was one song (or possibly even a quote), where the words "Faint hearts don't win fair ladies" were mentioned and those words have stuck with me the entire month. The objectives of this month had nothing to do with "fair ladies", of course, but the same general idea of the quote, that faint hearts can never exhibit valor or accomplish anything worthwhile, still rang true to the end.
During one devotional session early in the month, I realized the disparity between my emotions for the children of Happy Home Nepal and God's emotions for them. To fix this, as I wrote in an earlier blog, (Keep Your Head In The Clouds), I would need to first recognize the joy of my salvation and then ask God to plant within me new and appropriate emotions (Psalm 51). In Psalm 51:10, David asks God to "create a clean heart" for him. David did not try to muster up the correct emotions, which flow out of a correct heart-posture, himself, nor did he try to nip, tailor, and improve his old heart to match God's. Instead, he prayed for a total heart transplant in which he was a passive subject being acted upon by an active surgeon: God. After all, David was described as "a man after God's own heart." I tried to emulate David and pray for a heart transplant. I prayed that God would give me the only appropriate and adequate emotions towards the children, namely His own.
As the month progressed, I slowly realized that God had answered my prayer. Initially, I felt exactly what I expected to feel, namely, an overwhelming amount of love for the children. As I saw the children slowly coming to know Jesus and speaking openly in class about mercy, grace, and the sacrificial death of Jesus, I felt as proud as if I was their own father. As I witnessed them making mental leaps and bounds during our math classes, my mind raced with the obscurest wishes of ways to stay in Nepal longer.
One of the strangest feelings of my heart, however, I didn't diagnose as an answered prayer until a few days ago. Many times, throughout this month, I felt an overwhelming sense of jealousy. As the kids would hug me, write me notes, or play soccer with me, I would think, "please, do not give your love to another." Occasionally, new volunteers would pass through and stay for twenty four hours or so. As they came, I would secretly rejoice when the children ignored them or feel a fiery jealousy when the children would hug them…or even talk to them. "How dare you?" I would think, "First of all, do you realize how much we have sacrificed for you? We wake up at six in the morning for you and these people are just passing by! More than that, I just love you! Please don't do this to me."
These jealous feelings were mostly unfounded, of course, because there was nothing in me that made me inherently more deserving of these children's love than any other volunteer. Regardless of the slightly awkward and unfounded nature of the jealously, though, I slowly recognized the connection between this fiery, love-borne jealousy, and my prayer for God's emotions for the children to be planted within me. The God we serve is a deeply jealous God. His jealousy, however, is a righteous jealousy, because He actually is more deserving of His children's love than any other person or entity is. Exodus 34:14 says, "You are never to bow down to another God because Yahweh, being jealous by nature, is a jealous God." The height of all blasphemy is to compare oneself to God, but I now feel like I have a small picture of the emotions God feels when His children's love is not directed back to Him alone. I can only imagine that His jealousy is increased by its deserving nature. It has to break God's heart when he sees us prostituting ourselves to the Gods of money, comfort, and social status.
We were blessed to be a part of a sweeping spiritual transformation over this past month. At the beginning of the month, the children knew nothing about Jesus Christ. They now understand the Gospel, the salvation process, the person of Jesus, and the composition of the Bible better than many adults I know. During our morning Bible classes, the children would sing "My Savior, My God" and "Lord, I Lift Your Name On High" at the top of their lungs, and they would continue to sing and hum worship songs in math class as well! They now speak and write prayers to "The Lord Jesus" and ask thought-provoking questions about the Bible, which their are now five copies of, in Nepali, in their library. They have begun the daily habit of praying for more Christians to come to Happy Home– a prayer which was answered within 48 hours of the first time it prayed, as two Canadian Bible-college graduates showed up at Happy Home, unannounced to us, to volunteer for this coming month. God handed us the place this entire month and He glorified His name time and time again.
As the children grew spiritually and as we loved them more everyday, it also took an effort of the heart (one that could only be accomplished with a heart passively received by an actively-planting God), to love them as if we wouldn't be leaving at the end of the month. We and the children both knew that this euphoric season would have to come to an end, as do all seasons on this side of eternity's door. Granted, there is theoretically the chance God could lead me back to Nepal or divinely arrange for our paths to cross in some other way, but if I am going to be honest with myself and with my calling as I currently perceive it, I am forced to admit that I will likely never see these children again. I will probably never find out what they look like when they grow old, nor do I know whether I will rejoice with them around God's throne or whether they will spend will spend the remainder of eternity cast away from the presence of a Holy God.
I know that the love for the children that God gave our team and me was a deep love, as it was the kind that transcended the emotional realm and spilled over into the practical. It was the type of love that compelled us to re-arrange schedules to spend eleven and twelve hour days with the children, compelled us to steward our money with their good as a higher priority than our own, and allowed us to love and be loved in ways we knew would make it hard to leave at the end of the month.
It took me a courage that I simply did not initially have (yet another thing I had to plainly ask God to plant in me) to let my heart love and be loved. I have realized, though, that it is far greater to love deeply and hurt deeply than it is to love only slightly and hurt only slightly. When Moses is instructing the leaders of Israel's army before they invade the Promised Land, he tells them to say, in Deuteronomy 20:8, "Is there any man who is faint-hearted or cowardly? Let him leave and return home, so his brothers' hearts won't melt like his own." We are absolutely in a war today, only the war is not against flesh and blood but against spiritual darkness (Ephesians 6:12) and the war is not fought with the sword, but rather with love via Biblical truth and love via deed. When we understand that truth and love are our weapons, Moses' exhortation to the troops still applies today: "Anyone who is too faint-hearted to use the weapon needs to return home."
There is nothing within me that is inherently courageous. In fact, I am inherently quite the opposite. I praise God, however, for planting within me, through absolutely no act or merit of my own, a courageous heart in this season. I thank God for allowing me to love to the point of jealousy and love with the foreknowledge of ensuing hurt. I also thank God for glorifying His name at Happy Home Nepal. As we left yesterday night, the children sobbed, wailed, and pleaded for us not to leave. Internally, I pleaded the same thing. Luckily, I will never forget Happy Home Nepal, even if its all-too-short season in my life has come to an end. Better to love fully and hurt than never love at all. Faint hearts never win fair ladies.
