Today has been one of the most difficult days in ministry so far because reality set in. Nothing was sugar coated. For the first time, faces in a picture came to life. They became children filled with stories, children overflowing with personalities, and children in desperate need. Those TV commercials and billboards cannot explain to you the things I saw today. You see pictures? I see living, moving, breathing children crying out for help. I see families doing anything to survive. I see a way for Jesus to move.
To start off the day, we walked for a long time down what I consider paradise. Coconut trees and jungle-looking areas lined the rocky, muddy road with the occassional water buffalo. At parts, streams ran alongside the road next to sprouting gorgeous wild flowers. People dream in their offices about these things, and yet we walked this path as part of our daily routine. We made our way after some time to the homes of sponsored children. As mundane as this sounds, this part is where things went crazy.
To preface this, I have been praying for three things this month: greater compassion, joy in all circumstances, and for Jesus to strip my fear of demons so I can trust in the authority He gives us as His children. Needless to say, Jesus has answered every single prayer.
Our “task” for the day was to enter into homes of sponsored children and interview their parents about the past year. We had to be the person who steps into their home and personal life to write down information and then leave, but I wanted more than that. I wanted to be more than a passing face who invades their life for a brief time; I wanted to be Jesus to them.
Jesus felt true sorrow for the world, more sorrow than we could ever comprehend. Yet he has given me a small glimpse of that sorrow. He not only answered my prayer for compassion but he blew it out of the water. I felt a sorrow more than I have ever felt before upon hearing the stories of these familiies. For the first time, the Holy Spirit brought this sorrow to my heart to feel only a small piece of what Jesus felt. It’s a deep righteous sadness that I cannot put into words, but it breaks my heart. The more I prayed for them, the more I became sorrowful. My heart has a unexplainable heaviness because I have seen only a little bit of the problems. This world is so broken. This world is so fallen. This world is so cruel that it makes me physically sick to my stomach. I know that Jesus overcame the world, but at the moment, my heart absolutely breaks to see the fruit of sin.
The first house we entered into tore my heart in pieces. It wasn’t the house itself but rather the mother. She was so willing to open up and share difficulties in their famliy, but one moment in particular bore down to my soul. The second I asked the final question for any prayer request, she broke down in tears. This story was one I heard repeatedly today, one crying for God to help them because they cannot put enough food on the table. I had to hold back so many tears today because the Holy Spirit gave me their pain in that moment. I cannot explain it, but He showed me what it really means to share burdens as the body of Christ. In no way am I claiming that I have felt their hunger pains but the Holy Spirit can and did cause my heart to break in a greater way than ever before. Through her tears, I could see a woman working her hardest and it still not being enough for her family. I saw a woman feeling like a failure as a mother, like she had nothing else to give.
The Holy Spirit convicted me to pray for each family, for the struggles and for God’s love to overflow on them. As unreal as it seems, the more I prayed for them, the more my soul took on their sorrow. Jesus truly broke my heart for each person I saw.
