Cute right?
Wrong.
This is a photo of me on my first international mission trip to Rwanda.
If you walk into my house you will see this photo proudly displayed on the wall. You might think that I cared for this child and held and loved this child, but you are wrong.
I quite literally picked this child up from the street just to take a picture. I clearly remember walking off of the van and seeing this little baby toddling around in the road. I immediately scooped her up and looked into her sweet little eyes, than about a minute later (after a picture was taken of course) I set her back down and walked away. I never gave a second thought about this photo until pretty recently. I did not see anything wrong with taking this photo at the time but now I am ashamed. What message am I sending to that poor baby girl? That love is brief and fleeting? I am afraid that this is what the modern mission field is becoming. It is becoming a place where self glorification is the focus. I am not trying to point fingers or give myself credit for coming to this realization, but rather giving the opportunity for you to learn from my mistakes.
We will all mess up. We will all put ourselves in the center of the universe because that is human nature. But let us strive to be people glorifying Jesus because that will never leave us feeling ashamed, like I felt after looking back on this photo.
