Can I be absolutely honest and admit that I haven’t been especially fond of our ministry this month?
Okay, that wasn’t absolutely honest. I honestly had a near anxiety attack on Saturday because I didn’t want to go, and we weren’t even going again until Tuesday.
I love teenagers, and like older kids well enough.
Large groups of small children stress me out more than working a double shift at Moe’s on a Monday.
And that’s in America, where they can understand when I explain that I can’t play with them if they insist on repeatedly punching my face.
In Swaziland, where their parents have never disciplined them and the only English word they know is Hello?
Are you beginning to see the reason for my panic?
But through it all, God has taught me a handful of lessons about who he is. And that I’m much less like him than I wish I was.
1. God doesn’t make me wash my hands before I play with him.
In Africa everyone eats with their hands. The kids at the care point get a big bowl of this nasty mush of rice and beans every day, and when they’re done eating and try to come grab my hands and hug me and play clapping games with me, I (very sweetly) make them go rinse their hands off first. After a couple days of this I didn’t even have to ask them to do it anymore; they go do it on their own and happily run up to show me that their hands are already clean.
While I don’t think I’m being unloving in this(I’m so carefully un-mean about it, I sound like Barney on steroids), it does remind me that God doesn’t mind my mess. I can crawl into his lap covered in the metaphorical rice and beans of life, and he doesn’t laugh and carry me to the hose. He lets me get it all over him and then he helps me clean it up when it’s time.
2. I want to bring people to Jesus because he helped me first.
One day, a little girl slipped and fell on some gravel. She cried and the others kids laughed. I picked her up and brushed her off and let her sit in my lap til she was done crying. A little while later, a boy cut his foot on a stick. The same girl from earlier came running to me, grabbed my hand and led me over to him. He couldn’t walk, so I carried him to his teacher to get the cut wrapped up. Even later, another boy got hit in the face by one of the mean older kids, and the boy with the cut foot brought him to me.
I wasn’t the only one there that day; I wondered why none of them went to Kaysea for this kind of help. God whispered “Because you’re the one who helped them first.”
Jesus scoops me up in his lap when I’m sad and bandages my wounds when I get hurt. I know from experience that he’s the best and only real fixer-upper fixer, and that makes me want to bring every hurting person that I see to him.
3. God loves to hear me say his name.
Kids all over the world love my name. People in every country seem to remember it more easily than a lot of my teammates’ names. I’ve yet to figure out why they get Linda so easily yet can’t say Lizzie. For whatever reason that is, the little kids will sit down by me and just say my name over and over. Which is sort of annoying but mostly it’s just adorable.
One girl in particular will come up, sit her chin in my lap, look up into my face and say “LEENDA!” And I just say “hi!” because her name has a click in it and I can’t pronounce it. And she stays there and we repeat this exercise several times.
God doesn’t need me to have anything to say to him. He adores me even if I just want to sit with him and call his name.
