“Look! Look around you, look at where you are. SEE what is around you!” God called out to me with those words. I opened my eyes wider but I didn’t just look, I truly saw the people and the scene around me. There I was, standing in the middle of a village in Malawi, covered in mud, dirt and dust. My clothes were filthy, my face smudged with mud and my fingernails needing a good scrub. But I was so happy, so filled with joy. I was standing, surrounded by beautiful Malawian children with ripped clothes, bare feet and grimy hands. But those smiles, those glowing, Jesus-filled smiles. They have a joy that cannot be contained, a joy that they pass on to others. I’m holding their hands, I’m picking them up, I’m dancing with them, I’m loving on them in the simplest but most important way. I picked them up and held them, I kissed their dusty faces and rubbed their perfectly shaped heads with short African hair. I was literally standing in a place that I had dreamed about most of my life. God opened my eyes not just to look but to see the reality surrounding me. He removed the cataracts that had clouded my vision. I could now see these people, this day through His eyes.
I looked and saw the little house in the background that we had only minutes before been inside working. We had come to the village to help a family with the construction of a house for their mother. As we had walked toward the house through the village, we began to here cries of azungu, the term here for white people. Then we began to be joined by children following us as we walked. It was how I had always thought it would happen, they just wanted to follow us and be near us, they wanted to see what these people with skin so much lighter were doing. They looked at me with the most beautiful, dark eyes that glistened and twinkled in the sunlight.
When we arrived at the house of one of the family members we sat around on the ground and our host spoke to the family. The children all came around a sat silently, watching the interactions. They just wanted to watch and see. The children stayed with us the entire time that we were in the village. They even stayed outside the house as we “plastered” the walls with mud. There we were, using our hands to slap and spread a mixture of dirt and water on the walls of the house to plaster and the children waited outside for us.
Once we were told that we had plastered enough for that day and we would finish another time, we went outside to love those precious munchkins. As we stepped outside of the door we were almost instantly surrounded by little bodies. They all wanted to be loved and spend time with us. As I was smiling with them and playing, it was at that moment that God called out to me. He didn’t just want me to see them with my eyes, He wanted me to see them with HIS eyes. As I responded to His command to look, my perspective changed. I was no longer seeing and loving them with my eyes or love, I was doing it with HIS. That moment brought more emotion then I had felt for any people I have met on the Race. I could not stop the tears that filled my eyes as I saw these amazing people as God sees them. My vision was shattered and renewed, the cloudiness of the human cataracts was gone. I began to love on the children with renewed energy and passion, feeling as if I would explode with the joy that filled my heart.
God didn’t want me to only experience those moments as a feeble human can, He wanted me to experience them as He does. He wanted me to see these people as His children, the children of a King and nothing less. We are the children of a great and mighty King, we are royalty.
Mark 10:14-16
But when Jesus saw it, he was indignant, and said to them, “Let the young children come to me. Do not forbid them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God. Truly I say to you, whoever does not welcome the kingdom of God like a young child will never enter into it.” And after taking them into his arms, he blessed them, placing his hands on them.
