Love is so misunderstood in the world, and, for Christians, so underrated. If the power of true love was grasped – the kind that we were given first – Christians would never even consider trying to strike fear into the ‘lost’, or going on a mission trip with a ‘mission’ to convert others, or have a conversation with someone with an agenda behind it. There would be no fear of Mosques being built, or of death, or worry about the future, because where true love is present fear cannot exist. People aren’t blind. They can see straight through those things… your fear, your agenda, your desire to push your ways onto them. They can also see true love. So when people think of Christians, what do they think of? Relentless, uncircumstantial love… Or unforgiving, fear-based judgement? But there’s a generation of Christians changing what it means to follow Jesus. Here’s one example of true love. No agenda, nothing in return, just living for someone besides yourself, true love.
This is Katie Davis’ blog. She lives in Uganda and at age 21, has 14 adopted children. “Jesus does not ask that we care for the less fortunate,” she says, “He demands it. When calling ourselves Christ-followers caring for orphans, and desolate, and widowed, are not an option, it’s a requirement.” Here is just one of her incredible stories of love:
I
knew he was in bad shape as I caught that first glimpse of his leg’s skin burnt
charcoal black, bone exposed, nothing even still alive enough to bleed.
I
knew this man. At least, I thought I did. As the village drunk of Masese, he
was a constant annoyance to me. I was appalled – but not surprised – to
learn that while he was passed out in the middle of the day, some neighbors lit
his house on fire. The fire caught his leg and he crawled out just in time to
watch his neighbors steal all his remaining belongings from inside. And
thus began the season that I thought would heal him, but instead healed me.
He
moaned as I injected painkiller and mumbled a story that I couldn’t understand.
I prayed over his wound and over his heart, and when he fell asleep on the
porch, I didn’t make him move, but draped a blanket over him instead and I
didn’t realize that just this simple action would be the beginning of coming to
love the newest member of our family.
The
doctor at the best hospital around told me he would lose his leg if I didn’t
dress and clean it daily. That probably he would lose it anyway. At this point,
I don’t think he cared one way or another, but I did. Just months earlier,
tragedy had struck our family. And although I had no idea at the time, Jesus
was bringing about my own healing by drawing me into someone else’s. I couldn’t
verbalize it then, but it is as if my heart screamed, “I lost my daughter.
I lost my reality. You will not lose your leg. You will not lose yours.”
And so I threw myself into becoming an expert on third degree burn care.
For
hours each day I scraped the dead skin from this wound and God scraped at the
dead places of my heart. Buried places that, though I would never say it,
somehow doubted that God could be good, all the time, when my daughter’s bed
lay empty. And I said it out loud, to him and to myself. God uses all for good.
For His glory. God is using this, I said, and I smiled at new pink life showing
through and though I didn’t recognize it yet, God was growing new life out of
the very hardest places of my heart.
For
a month he came and went. I would bandage the leg and send him home; he would
return the next day and I would almost be thankful that he was drunk because
even still the pain was excruciating. I would wash and scrape and scrub and
dress and I cry and I would say to that wound and to anyone who would listen,
“We will not lose this leg.” Others from the community stepped over
our new friend asleep on the porch and they shook their heads. “You can’t
save ’em all. Not this one, Katie.” But I am stubborn. And God is
relentless.
Eventually
he just moved in to the little house in our back yard. This made finding him at
bandaging time quite a bit easier and it allowed me to make sure he wasn’t
drinking. As he began to sober up, we began to have longer conversations; he
would tell me all about his life and his family before he became an alcoholic
and found himself homeless in Masese and I would tell him about a Savior born
as an infant in a feeding trough and nailed to a tree.
He
questioned everything I said about God’s goodness and sovereignty, and I know
that as I was answering him, I was answering myself, too. In the darkest place
of my life God had me testify each day exactly who I knew Him to be. In those
hours of wound bandaging He was introducing Himself to me again. The Working
All For Good God. The Still and Always Faithful God. The God who sees who we
are and uses all the broken places to make us who we are becoming. I said these
things out loud and I watched God make them true all over again.
And
this is what I learned: the hard does not minimize His goodness but allows us
to experience His goodness in a whole new way.
252
days of wrapping and talking and laughing and crying later, new skin covered
this once dead area. The leg that so many thought was lost could walk and even
run. And the man that so many thought was hopeless had been sober for over 6
months. A week later, this physically healed man walked into my kitchen as
grinned from ear to ear. “I believe it,”� he announced, “today I believe that
Jesus is the Son of God.”�
Simple as that.
I
didn’t try to contain my excitement as I danced around the kitchen that day,
and I still daily choke back tears as the time I once spent wrapping his leg in
gauze is now spent scouring the Bible together for the answer to his every
question.
The burnt area on his leg is still a few shades lighter than
the skin surrounding it. “Can I look at your leg?” I ask often, and
he knows why. “See what God did?” he will chuckle. And we both see so
much more than new skin.
I still need $3,500 to finish school at the G42 Leadership Academy in Mijas, Spain. Please contact me if you’re interested, or there are multiple ways to partner with me, including through Paypal or the G42 website, by clicking on my ‘Support‘ page. Thanks!
