It’s Tanzania…and I am finding myself excited because we finally get to step in to an African orphanage…something our team has been looking forward to.
The day was cold and windy, not what I thought the African desert would feel like at all. The orphanage overlooked the town of Iringa where we’re staying. It looks as though we stepped in to a middle eastern bible town minus the tin roofs over the small dispersed buildings. Wind swirled in dust tornadoes in front of me and the desert flowers bloomed in gorgeous yellows and purples. The mountains almost looked purple as the sun was beginning to set and the rolling clouds left mile long shadows that stretched over their peaks. The natural beauty of Africa is absolutely breathtaking. I turned from this masterpiece to face a different beauty…God’s precious baby kids that we all piled in this little truck and traveled over endless bumpy roads to come see.
We walked in to the orphanage to find ourselves face to face with 37 precious children that have been rescued from the life on the streets. They had no families, they had nothing, and yet they had so much life within them; something I wish I had a boost of being just over the middle of this 11 month race and finding myself needing to be revived to life again.
They all gathered and sang a few songs for our group. I began praying for this little singing coir standing before me and then something began to dawn on me. Have you ever stood in church singing songs and completely zoned out as if the words that crossed your lips only seem to be learned repetition, but the depth of what was just said doesn’t seem to register? I have done that countless times over while gazing off at a random lady’s ridiculous hair style or a young child hanging over the banister and its mother embarrassingly reprimanding him. Well, I could see this same look in these children’s eyes; their little minds wondering off as they were probably wondering who we were. I recently read this verse in 2 Peter 1 from the Message that says,
“Grace and peace many times over
as I deepen in my experience with God and Jesus”.
It struck me that as we pursue God’s heart we shall not be perfect at it, and God says it’s okay. He gives us grace over and over as we learn to experience our Heavenly Daddy. He desires it to be a peaceful enjoyment of a journey, rather than a guilt or a heaviness. I watch these baby kids who are just so saturated in His grace whether they know it or not, and praise God we are as well despite our years that separate us from that simple child like faith.
As I listened to these kids absent mindedly sing a song that they probably sang countless times before, it took me back to the moment when I first prayed to God telling Him I believed who He was and wanted Him to be my Lord. I was barely five years old, and I have to say I didn’t understand quite the magnitude of the words that flowed from my mouth, but God did. I didn’t know that that moment would transform the rest of my eternity. I mean, do we grasp the magnitude of the words that we say, the words that we pray, the words that we sing? Our words hold power! And know that God sits on His throne hearing every word that comes from our lips whether we really know what we are saying or not. But in God’s grace, He still hears our words whether or not we speak them out of repetition, or we speak them out of ignorance, and He responds. He knows our hearts, even when our minds may be so finite.
So these precious baby kids sang the familiar song that says,
“Open the eyes of my heart, Lord, Open the eyes of my heart, I want to see you.
To see you high and lifted up, shining in the light of your glory.
Pour out your power and love as we sing ‘Holy, holy, holy.’
Holy, holy, holy. Holy, holy, holy, I want to see you.”
Our God is a God who hears and acts upon our prayers. Maybe not right away, or maybe not till He wakes us up to the places of glory that He is calling us to, but our words are not falling on deaf ears. And as these baby kids sing this song, my eyes scan their faces while asking God to hear the words from their lips, even if they don’t understand what beholding your glory may look like. Even I who pray that over them am so far from understanding what it truly means to be face to face with God. But still, Lord, open the eyes of their hearts to behold your glory so they may see you; to stand in your very presence, glory revealed. Should that not result in anything less than a life transformed for eternity as it did for a little girl almost 20 years ago?
