Story time…
This past week has been spent in Siem Reap, Cambodia. We had time here together as an entire squad to be refreshed by each other and time with God to process and grow. It has been an incredible time of blessing.
At the beginning of the week a few of us were sitting on a bridge in the rain. A man selling ice cream in a cart walked by a number of times and finally we bought some. It was $0.25 per popsicle he had. Honestly, it was not my favorite, but I was still happy because it was ice cream in Cambodia and how could I not be happy about that? As we sat, talked and ate, 2 children walked onto the bridge carrying trash they had been collecting. They were obviously street kids. I saw one of them eye-balling our ice cream and my teammate and I decided to give the rest of our popsicles to them. Once I handed over my ice cream, I attempted to use my limited Khmer that I had learned over the past month to talk to them. I have 4 shaky sentences- 'what is your name?', 'how are you?', 'I love you', and 'God bless you'. After I ran out of Khmer, we played with them for a little bit and went our separate ways.
It was nothing special to me, just another moment,
another street kid to smile at and attempt Khmer with.
(Not the actual boys from my story, but two precious boys from the streets of Phnom Penh)
Fast forward a week. We are walking down the street and stop to talk to a 12 year old girl who carries her baby sister around all day asking foreigners to buy her milk. All of the sudden, three street boys walk by us and stop to talk. I catch two of them looking at us and smiling like they know something we don't. I take a better look at them and realize that although now they have clothes on, they are the same two boys we gave ice cream to a week ago. These boys see thousands of tourists on the streets of their city every day and yet they recognize our faces. They remembered us from that small moment on the bridge that I had almost forgotten and written off as insignificant. What seemed like nothing to me was obviously something huge in their lives.
How could such a small act of love have such an impact on someone?
I didn't tell them about Jesus, give them a bunch of money or change anything significant about their lives. I simply gave them a very small picture of His incomprehensibly huge love for them in the form of a partly eaten ice cream stick. It astounds me how much power the love of Christ has. I don't even have to be consciously aware it's happening and He continues to work through me.
How great and powerful is my God.
"Follow God's example, therefore, as dearly loved children and walk in the way of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God." Ephesians 5:1-2
(Cambodian sunset. Photo credit: Emily Schwartz)
