Ever wonder why
me?
Yeah, me too. But it’s usually in the context of having something bad happen to
me when I think I don’t deserve it. This time when I wondered it, it was the
reverse.
This past week,
I’ve heard and seen many things that have caused me to pause and think.
Hopefully when I resume forward movement, it’s on a better path through life.
The kids here have affected me way more deeply than the kids in Africa. Maybe
it’s because most of them speak English so I can communicate. Maybe it’s
because I love southeast-Asia. Or maybe it’s just because they look like me and
I can see myself in them and understand them. I love these kids. And it’s so
hard to see all the stuff that happens to them.
Matthew 25:34-40
We always wonder
why bad things happen to us. Why don’t we ever wonder why good things happen to
us? As Americans, we think with such entitlement! But we’re not actually
entitled to anything. I know I sure feel like I deserve a lot of things. But in
reality, I don’t. This week, I understood this in a whole new way.
It kind of
rocks your world when you see a 14-year-old girl who has to sell her body to
survive.
Or a 9-year-old who’s so malnourished that he looks like he’s 6.
Or a
23-year-old prostitute who has a baby.
Or an 19-year-old who has to find
whatever work he can because there is no money to buy milk to feed his older
brother’s baby.
Or an 18-year-old who suffered so much sexual abuse that she
now has the mental capacity of a 5-year-old.
Or a 16-year-old who was beaten so
much that he ran away and has no one that will claim relation to him, whose
greatest wish is that God will give him a new family.
These things all
left me bewildered, wondering, why me, God? Why did you choose
ME to be born in America? To be born into a loving, supportive family? To be
well-cared for and never left wanting? What did I do to deserve to have all
this when these kids have so little?!
God’s quiet
response filled my thoughts. So you can help them. So you can show them Me.
I love these kids.
I want these kids. If I could, I’d adopt several of them right now and start a
home. But I can’t.
So help me show
them love, show them God. I see the need every time I look out the front gate
and I want to do something about it. Right now, I don’t care about funding for
myself. I want you to help support these kids. Christmas is coming. How would
you feel if you went to bed on Christmas day with an empty stomach and empty
hands, dressed in ragged clothes and sleeping curled up under an awning on a
concrete sidewalk with no one to love you? Not so great, right?
Things in the Philippines aren’t expensive.
Street food is less than $0.25 for a meal, rice is under $1 per kilo. A shirt is $3,
shorts $4, and flip flops $2. Yet people here are so poor that when they get
sick, they can’t afford to go to the doctor. So, they die. I’m asking you to
give up one toy, one caf̩ latte, one gallon of gas Рthe equivalent of $5 Рto
help make life better for these kids. Yeah, you can donate to me if you want. I
can use the money that you give to buy things for the kids to keep them
healthy. If not, that’s fine, too. Write a check for KIM Ministries. Or make a
shoebox for The Shoebox Project or donate to Compassion International or World
Vision. Better yet, sponsor a child through one of these organizations!
It
doesn’t matter to me which you do.
Just do something.
