Some photos from a feeding we provided for children in a local slum neighborhood…
I'm not completely sure why I want you to see these photos. I think my hope is a couple of things might happen as a result of you seeing them.
I hope you will see how real these children are, and take joy in the fact that your prayers, your encouragement, your financial support and everything else you contribute to this World Race thing is affecting real people, with a need of real help, in a real way. And it's because of you…your generosity, your prayer, your desire to share Jesus. So rejoice! These are some of the faces you're reaching!
I hope you see how real these children are, and note the expressions in their eyes. I hope you note how the ones toward the back of the lines tend to be looking forward with anticipation and wonder. I hope you note how they are bringing any number of plates, bowls and plastic bags with them to be filled up, because they are hungry for a hot, nutritious and filling meal. And I hope it puts precious and invaluable faces to the idea of "people around the world in need".
I hope you see how real these children are, and start praying for them. Maybe them specifically sure, or maybe you start praying for children in poverty around the world. Children who live at the mercy of what their parents are willing to give. Children who have no hope in themselves, only in the grace and goodwill of others. I hope you begin to see them as individually precious as your own children, or children you may know. That you begin to see them as some of God's favorite. I hope that you somehow fall in love with them and pray for them, knowing you have no control and that they may never know people around the world were rallied for their sake.
I hope that you see how real these children are and begin to wonder and ask how God may want to use you in new, different and scary ways. Maybe it's adoption. Maybe it's something through Compassion International. Maybe it's prayer. Maybe it's more. Maybe it isn't. I don't know what God is leading you towards in regards to helping or serving others, let alone children. But I do hope these photos help give you a moment of pause to sit for a minute and ask Him what He may have for you in this area.
And I hope that if He says this isn't something for you to carry, that you desperately begin to ask what it is He has for you to carry.
It's these children, and others I've come across in the past 3 months, combined with the people I've met who are serving them selflessly (without being "especially called" or "deeply spiritual") that are working in combination to help me see that this is all so much bigger than me…and in no way focused on me. It's hitting me. And nothing is happening instantaneously, and I'm not on some new crusade to save the world or every child…but something in my spirit is being affected, or altered or…something, and I hope to try and share some of it with you. For you to experience it as well.
Those are my hopes. These are some of the faces that God is using to renew my mind and my spirit, and I hope these children are able to do the same for you.
(I've often heard it said, and many times on World Race blogs, that it isn't about me. And I'm beginning to feel the slightest tips of what that might actually mean. How it might actually change how my life is lived. I am beginning to feel it, slight tingles of life, like electricity, jumping around inside me. Something is definitely happening…)
