Wow, God. You brought me here once and I couldn’t forget it. The eyes that had looked at mine were the most beautiful and the most heartbreaking. 17 little bodies fight for rest on hard pavement. 17 little minds don’t know what will fill their tummies. God, I have never felt more weak or more small. God, you humbled me. I looked at them and couldn’t do a thing to help. These children were more hospitable to me than I’ve ever been to another human being. They greeted us with hugs, smiles, and songs. As their voices sang to us, my ears heard “a whole new world,” and my heart asked you to bring them into a whole new world, where they know the meaning of the word abundance.
God, you humbled me again today. As I walked back into that room with a dirt floor and no walls, you asked me for something. As the same voices sang again, this time “come thou fount, ” my heart heard “fight.”
You have asked me for surrender. You have asked me for submission. You have asked me to follow you radically. You asked for full permission to ask me to do the boldest things for your name.You have asked me to only look at you and stand on raging waves.
And then when you asked me to fight, you asked me to spend my whole life learning how to love these little lives that will grow into big and important lives. You filled me with your thoughts of them. God, as I cried, you cried. And when the rain fell the kids ran into it. That’s my prayer for them from now until I can’t pray anymore, that they would dance and sing and play because they can feel the weight of your love and they know the power of your compassion on them. That they would drown in the justice you will bring for them. God, you said that you would fight for the orphans. You said you would bring justice and bring an abundant life.
Though their home now is a small brick home on a hill, in a village, in Haiti, though their clothes don’t fit and their food isn’t enough and their families aren’t there to love them, you promise something better.
You promise them a palace, and a room all their own, in the midst of people who have been shown how to love perfectly. You have a place in your book for them and a hand-written invitation to the greatest feast with the most satisfying drink and the most endless, abundant joy.
God, I pray for the church. I pray for soft hearts and quiet hearts. I pray for quiet so we only hear you speak. I pray for action, I pray for obedience, I pray for heartbreak. I pray that every time it rains we would see kids dancing. I pray that we would see ourselves dancing. I pray that we would see heaven, and feel the song in our breath as we only speak of you.
