An emaciated infant looked back at me.
His hollow eyes illuminated on a screen tonight as eighty-five people looked on.
Once again…
I stood looking at another orphan in Africa.
It’s almost cliche’
We see it on TV. We have all seen that tragedy stained photograph.
A malnourished child stalked by a vulture biding its time. Death. Needless death. Death we can see waiting. Meaningless death. Something that could have been stopped. Yet the great weight of the whole of human suffering presses on us. Discouraging us and pushing away hope. Our natural reflex is to recoil.
Disconnect. Disassociate.
Only…
I can’t do that anymore. I just can’t. I can’t disassociate. Sometimes it’d be easier.
Just like that, I was back…
Suddenly I was back in Asia.
Haunted by the things I’ve seen. It’s not a bad haunt. It’s like an old friend that comes by unannounced. The ghosts of memories that we would rather forget drift by and catch our breath. And at once we're lead off into an old nostalgic land. Remembering the most intimate moments of life and death.
…………………
It is September. I have never worked at an AIDS orphanage before.
I am excited. I am terrified.
This is the final realization of that stereotypical bright-eyed youthful college answer.
“What do you want to do in life?”
“I don’t know, but I’ve always wanted to work at an AIDS orphanage.”
We sit silently. Weary travelers with tender hearts on a bus headed toward hurting souls.
Songs play through earbuds as the countryside passes by at eighty Kilometers an hour. Smoke billows from factories and temples on the highway. Could I really make a difference? Thousands sat outside my window worshipping demons and burning to find a God they have never known.
There is so much work.
We pull into the North City. Once again exhausted and elated from a full week of teaching the bible.
This is our relaxation.
Visit an AIDS orphanage. Yeah, good weekend plan.
“Hey, I noticed we had some free-time, do you want to throw our hearts in a blender before we teach on monday?”
Sometimes I wonder if I am crazy, or if I just really like Jesus.
We arrived at the bus station. That was a night of confusion. We stumbled through streets to find the orphanage.
It’s dark by the time we reach the burrough we are looking for.
I am scared. I half want to say, “Let’s turn back, God probably wants us to do something more timid and less faithful anyways.”
Sometimes saying things out loud let’s us know when we are wrong.
Finally we see a winding staircase that coils up towards a building filled with laughter and crying.
Then I’m at the orphanage.
My hands are sweaty. I am so ready… so ready to not be good enough for this.
I don’t know what to do. When it comes to being with children, they are as alien to me as pinterest. I talk to them about tax fraud and ask what the wife is like at home. Maybe they will be seven and able to engage in debate about science.
We arrived too late to really be of much use to the sleeping piles of eight and nine year olds on the main floor. Nope. Instead we are ushered upstairs by a nice lady with hardly any teeth.
She is HIV positive. Almost all of the workers are.
On the second floor is a room full of babies. Toddlers. Orphans. Some with full blown AIDS. Some who are just abandoned. Suddenly we are handed babies. Our job is to watch them for the night.
Feed them.
Water them. That is what you call it right? I mean, maybe they drink milk. I’m new to children. I didn’t know babies ate so often. I also gag when I change them.
Yes, I may just throw up on my son someday.
He’ll probably owe me anyway.
So we sleep on the floor. The children squirm and giggle, cry and laugh.
It is here that I am caught in the strangest limbo. Emotions flood and overcome me.
These children have no one. They have no one but a revolving door of strangers.
Some have little tiny fingers and hands and feeding tubes. They are clinging to life. They are so precious, so fragile. They have overcome more trials then I can imagine just to enter this world, let alone giggle and grin.
That night we wake up and feed. Wake up and feed. I get puked on. I panic. Then get puked on again. I am not good at this. We cuddle with the infants. And I am in a strange blissful dream-like state.
The next morning I see him.
I never caught his name. I never told him how much he impacted me.
………………..
Just a young teenage boy. He cannot hear. In this culture, being deaf is tantamount to being mentally retarded.
In pitiful tones and sad whispers his story is relayed to me.
He was sold into sex slavery as a young boy. Infected with HIV. He never learned the sign language that he should have. He doesn’t know what he has. He hardly even understands it.
Smiling. Over-sexual. He plays with children. Older men come from upstairs. A darker side to all this starts to show itself.
I cannot externalize the shattering that took place inside. The spirit tells me that this is a cycle of abuse. It will continue. I cannot whisper the things that the Spirit uttered to me. It’s too painful. This place… This kid needs Jesus.
I’d like to say I saw him meet Jesus.
But life isn’t always pretty that way.
I still think about that young teenager all the time.
As the weeks went on we returned and saw newborns recently abandoned. Children with no identification that live as foreigners that exist in no documents. Abused woman go back and forth. The darkness is so strong. The light is so desperate to shine here.
I come home week after week, secretly bleeding. Secretly hurting. Wounded deep in my soul for the malnourished, the maligned, the marginalized.
I left forever changed.
…………………..
“Sometimes I cannot forgive
And these days, mercy cuts so deep
If the world was how it should be, maybe I could get some sleep
While I lay, I dream we’re better,
Scales were gone and faces light
When we wake, we hate our brother
We still move to hurt each other
Sometimes I can close my eyes,
And all the fear that keeps me silent falls below my heavy breathing,
What makes me so badly bent?
We all have a chance to murder
We all feel the need for wonder
We still want to be reminded that the pain is worth the thunder
Sometimes when I lose my grip, I wonder what to make of heaven
All the times I thought to reach up
All the times I had to give
Babies underneath their beds
Hospitals that cannot treat all the wounds that money causes,
All the comforts of cathedrals
All the cries of thirsty children – this is our inheritance
All the rage of watching mothers – this is our greatest offense”
………………………………………………
Oh God, it feels good to not be able to disassociate.
I used to be afraid to go into pain. It was uncomfortable. It was hard. It was terrifying. I’m so glad I was scared, not comfortable, and did not take the easy route.
As that screen played today at the community event for Africa. Images flickered and my heart welled up with compassion. Tears formed in my eyes. I was back in the thick of the pain I had experienced in Asia.
I’m so glad It took me back to a place of hurt and tender compassion instead of forward to a place of awkward off-color jokes and obvious insensitivity to the hurting people in this world.
It’s so easy to forget. This week with the happening in boston, the manhunt, the texas fire, the anniversary of so many tragic days… it’s so easy to just become numb. The people on TV bleed into pixels. The messages fall static upon our ears. The separation between tragedy and our hearts becomes so great we labor to not even pray for the atrocities we see happening almost every day.
The digitized rumblings of world events sterilize the most meaningful moments.
In America it is so easy. SO easy, to let that homeless guy, that girl who is cutting, that annoying kid you can’t stand… be another sad lost cause. Another disconnected moment we blot out of our over-positive never-negative showing pseudo-facebook lives.
Three years ago. Those little children would have just been mere images on a screen. It took walking into the pain and hurt, facing the darkness in this world, before I could connect.
So I’m saying to you. Begging you…
Don’t let tragedy get old. Don’t let the holocaust become a moment of jokes. Genocide a mere afterthought. Human trafficking a mere inconvenience.
Wake up!
Apathy is a poison so vile it dries up our very soul before we even realize it has been applied. Like a sick stranger we become lost in our own body. We no longer recognize the uncaring glare that stares back. we no longer weep at pain. We are no longer moved to strong emotion. We no longer understand the loss of our glory and fulfillment of our redemption.
Like that near perfect blissful sleep that we feel during a boring lecture. We nod our head a little bit and then snap alert for just a second. Then fall back asleep. Then snap back. The feeling of sleep is an ecstasy in that moment. The temptation to fall asleep and become a mere unengaged presence is overwhelming. It can take so much work. So much effort to break free of apathy.
Breathe You In – Thousand Foot Krutch
When apathy wells up, run, freaking run.
Move your heart into the tragedy around you. Open it up. Rub water on the hardened clay. Pray and weep. Fast and mourn.
Ask for Jesus to come in and give you compassion. Get your hands dirty with the messiness of life.
Why? Because we are not moved by the homeless. We are not moved by great tragedy. We are not moved by small tragedy. Nowadays we are only moved by romantic comedies and Animal Planet.
Stupid.
Trivial matters.
Ain’t nobody got time for that!
If you cannot see the great need in the eyes of a starving child, can you really ever see the great needs in your closest friends and family?
If great suffering cannot move us to an ounce of compassion, can we ever be moved by the underlying invisible suffering of the people around us?
I say this because, one day that person you ALWAYS planned to forgive will be gone.
One day that person you always planned to call and encourage will not be here anymore.
One day that dream you planned to embark upon will be too far to accomplish.
That life you plan to tell about Jesus will no longer be on this Earth.
I know because I’ve lost those chances. I’ve seen the great painful results of fear and passive apathy. Breaking free of that feels near impossible. But with Jesus it is possible.
Time is so precious. Just a few meals can save lives. Just a few moments can save souls!
We should be moving, sprinting, running, desperate to see the kingdom of Christ on earth. To tell our friends and neighbors about the great salvation inside of us. Whether it is the best friend we are too scared to tell about Christ or the old love we are too afraid to apologize too, there is so much work, redemption, and reconciliation that just needs to be done.
Oh Jesus, I’m so glad He loves us so desperately. Romans 8 says that we are in Christ children of God. How beautiful it is that God would come down and give His life to make us part of His family! I’m so glad that Jesus was not passive. He was not apathetic.
He stood on the top of mountains and wept. He had compassion on the lepper. The homeless. The poor. The tax collector. The prostitute. The very people who killed Him.
I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for that compassion.
Oh Jesus, I love you. Oh God, move this generation to well up mercy! To cry out and scream for change! Oh Lord break our hearts. Lead us into brokeness so unreal and utterly unfathomable we need you to reconcile it. Use that to lead grace and mercy and compassion in us to reach the dying, the hurt, the lost, the apathetic, the pathetic, the crippled, and the lonely.
Oh Jesus, move us.
