Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.
James 1:27
As the beginning of my trip draws closer, I continually think more about the ministry in which I will be participating. My heart begins to bleed for the poor that I will be living amongst, and I imagine the faces of the poor children and burdened mothers I will touch. Last night I was babysitting, and as I was giving the little one year old boy his bottle, and putting him down for bed, I began to think of all the babies I will work with over the next year whose parents aren’t returning at the end of the night. All the children who have been deserted, sold, or abused by their families. I began to realize that the next year of my life I am going to be immersed in the pain of the orphans and widows that most of the world do not consider. These are exactly the people that Jesus tells us to care for. The marginalized, poor, and overlooked.
After putting the little boy to sleep, I began watching a movie called Children Underground. It is a documentary which follows the lives of a “family” of street children living in the subways of Bucharest, Romania. Some of them are runaways escaping abuse and poverty, and some are orphans left to the streets after the fall of communism. Thousands of people walk by them every day as they steal and beg to survive, and huff paint to escape their pain and hunger without noticing. Watching this documentary not only flooded me with gratitude for my life here in America, but also gave me a small idea of the people I will be surrounded by over the next year. I became excited that I have the opportunity to put into practice Christ’s commands to came for the poor in spirit, the widows, and orphans. I genuinely believe I was created to love the poor and to show them a small glimpse of God’s love for them. The next year will only be a taste of what the Lord has for my life, and I am terrified and excited all at the same time.
