A quick background before I dive into the meaning behind this blog:
Our ministry this month in South Africa is with LIV Village. It’s an incredible organization that brings in the children who need loving homes, puts them in a home with up to 5 other “siblings” and a “mom,” provides schooling and therapies for each child, and just allows them to be the kid they were created to be raised in a village with love. It was started by a former South African rugby and cricket player named Titch Smith and his wife Jane Smith. It’s literally a village of foster children! They’re well fed and have a clinic on the village property. It’s pretty incredible; they even grow crops for supermarkets and have a welding school and a culinary school for people in the surrounding neighborhood to take. The surrounding neighborhood around the village is somewhere between a 70-75% unemployment rate; so the hope is to continue expanding LIV Village to help employ the community too. So much love, care, and planning went into LIV Village and it’s evident anywhere you look, it’s a beautiful property!
All that being said, my team is actually serving a school about 30 minutes away from LIV that had been vandalized/looted by that community due to the previous principal who had embezzeled money or something like that. The new principal is great and so we are joining in on helping to fix up that school that previous LIV volunteers have started to repair! I’m excited to help out this school and do manual labor again!
Life Is Way Too Short… that is a phrase I feel that we almost throw around hapharzardly, without truly reflecting on what that means. We have no promise or guarantee of ANY day here on earth. Each day is a precious gift from our loving Abba and we don’t always recognize it. This is a hard topic and there are some things in here that are going to be hard to write; I’m just continually asking the Holy Spirit for boldness and the right words to say.
On Friday (10/27), our day of ministry was essentially cancelled due to a funeral that was happening. A 5 year old girl, a daughter here at LIV, unexpectedly passed away due to an illness that the doctor’s couldn’t quite figure out and while getting surgery for something, she died. 5 years old. One of the brightest/healthiest kids (up to when she got sick), full of life, imagination, and laughter, gone. Just like that. It has hit LIV Village hard. It’s the second child death they’ve experienced this year! A 10 year old boy passed away earlier in the year.
I appreciate the service and the way LIV approached it. They wanted it to be a celebration of this little girl’s life. It was filled with songs and stories of who she was and how she impacted everyone around her at only 5 years old! Her teacher’s eulogy was so moving, I was crying and I never met the child. The tiny coffin was also a hard sight to take in. I’ve never been to a child’s funeral; adult funerals are hard enough, but this little girl only lived 5 years on earth. But it was made very clear that she is up in Heaven dancing above us and probably hanging upside-down on a jungle gym (which she did often here at LIV.) I believe the principal was the master of ceremonies and he made a point before he closed the service in prayer. This is essentially what he said (I didn’t write it down so bare with me, you’ll get the gist of it.)
Everyone here, for the most part, is able to understand that not everyone will be able to see her in Heaven. Not all of us are going to be there. You need to make sure that you have a true and real relationship with our Lord and Savior Jesus, that He KNOWS You, not the works you did on earth but WHO YOU ARE AS A CHILD OF GOD! Take this seriously, KNOW God!
It was said in a much better, and moving way, but I want to say the same thing to people reading this. Not everyone in your life will be in Heaven. I would like to say that everyone I know and love will be in Heaven but I can’t. That’s not up to me, it’s up to you and God. When I say, life is too short, it means so much more now. At 28 years old; I’ve lived over 5x as long as the little girl who died. I’m not guaranteed another year, or day for that matter so the days that I do wake up here on earth, I need to make them count. I hope that this blog is a wake up call to a lot of people. I may not be speaking directly to you, personally, but maybe while reading this blog, someone popped into your brain and you though – “will I see them in Heaven?” I encourage you to begin praying for people even more, even harder that they find salvation. That they place their identity in God, not in the earthly standards that we have put in place.
I encourage you to have hard conversations with people, they’ll be uncomfortable but in 2 Timothy 4:1-5 it says, “I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching. For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. As for you, always be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.” We are told to help others when they are stumbling, to love them but point them back towards the Cross. A big part of the Race has been giving feedback; pointing out things in each other that are good and other things that we can improve on. We see the potential in each other and call them up in love, as we like to call it. It’s what we’re called to do, and I think we need to start taking that more seriously, because after all, life is way too short!
Sidenote: on Monday (10/30) one of the little girls with Cerebral Palsy passed away, she was 3 years 10 months old today (11/3) was her memorial service. Please pray for the LIV community, they are really hurting.
