I want to introduce you to my friend Clara. She and her family stayed at the same guest house where my team has been staying for the past week, and she and I quickly became friends. She has sparkling big blue eyes and long brown hair that’s grown way down passed her backside. We swam together and painted together and she taught me how to do a back tuck summersault and a running cart wheel as we practiced our yoga moves together. She didn’t realize that she was also teaching me how God shows up at the perfect time, even in moments that would otherwise seem mundane, and that His plan and purpose is far greater than any of my small-minded expectations.
There are many ways that this trip has been challenging for me and I often find it difficult to understand how to do “life as ministry”. Not having a specific ministry or host continues to stretch me, and I constantly find myself thinking that I’m not “doing” enough; that I’m not being used by God in the way I expected to be on a mission trip. I want to feed the poor and hold the orphans and build houses for the homeless and plant churches. I want to see tangible results from all of the things that I “do.” When prayer walking through the streets of a city or village becomes our most frequent ministry, it can be easy to get discouraged and think that we are missing something in God’s calling. I would never downplay the importance and power of prayer, and I’m so thankful to have those opportunities to prayer walk knowing that God will hear our cries and answers when we call upon His name. But through my friendship with Clara, I also learned that God can truly use us wherever we go and that I don’t need to have a scheduled ministry opportunity to bring His kingdom to every place that we find ourselves.
Clara is a beautiful five year old girl from San Fransisco, California. Her family has been traveling (quite similarly to the way we are) for the past six months, and she’s been to countries like Japan, Vietnam, and of course Cambodia where we met. She and her older sister, Julia, are being homeschooled through their travels and her mom and dad, Carilu and Jay, were so friendly to us and interested in hearing all about our journey. We got to sit and have long conversations with them about our travels, their travels, fun things to do in the area, challenges of returning home, and most importantly our faith in Jesus. One of the first days after arriving to this guest house my team was doing our morning Bible study together while the girls were having their breakfast at the next table. We heard Clara ask her mom, “What is the Bible?” My ears were instantly perked and I prayed right then that her curiosity would take root within her and flourish in a way that would drive her to learn more about what this book is and who it’s all about. The team noticed that for the next few days, Carilu and Julia and Clara would come to breakfast at the same time we would have our morning Bible study and “just happen” to sit close enough to overhear our discussion about what we read that day.
On the last day that Clara’s family was staying at the guest house, I decided to draw in my art book while finishing my breakfast. Her family sat nearby finishing theirs, and next thing I knew she was at my side watching me draw. She asked what I was drawing, but quickly recognized the hand and the world and said, “ I know! That’s God’s hand holding the world. Is he holding it because gravity will let it fall?” Oh how I LOVE the mind of a child and the innocence in their observations. I said, “No, He’s holding it because He created it and He loves it.” She asked if she could see the rest of my drawings, so we flipped through my book as she asked more questions about the cross, the hands of Jesus, the words I’d scribbled to a song, and some other doodles in the book that had to do with God. She looked up and said, “ I have a journal…maybe we can draw together? And I really don’t mind if we paint something about God.” My heart exploded. This sweet little girl barely knows anything about the God I believe in, yet she was so ready and willing to draw a picture of Him with me. I couldn’t help but remember Jesus words in Mark 10:14, “Let the children come to me and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.” She quickly suggested that we paint one picture together, and that I should paint Jesus and she would paint a rainbow around Him. Seriously…that was her own suggestion…without my prompting. And so that’s what we did. In the last few moments I got to spend with my dear little friend, we sat together and painted a picture of Jesus under a rainbow.
She cried as her family packed up to leave and I couldn’t help but get a little teary-eyed myself, not only because I will miss her bright, blue eyes and darling smile, but also because I am so overjoyed to have a heavenly Father who loves this little girl so much that He sent an over-sized kid like me to paint a picture of Jesus with her. If I had been out “doing ministry” or scheduled to be somewhere else, I would not have had the opportunity to sit with her, laughing and painting a picture that will remain in her journal as a reminder to keep wondering and asking who He is. I pray that she will ask more and more questions about the Bible and that she will come to fully know Jesus as her Lord and Savior. And I can’t help but hope that one day she might remember the time when she was a little girl that He sent her a tall, silly lady in Cambodia to tell her just a little bit about this amazing God who holds the whole world in His hands.
