Depraved Indifference.
If I am being honest my ministry in Zambia was not my favorite. My team was mainly working at a preschool in Livingstone and it was miserable. The kids used us as human jungle gyms and didn’t understand the word no. It was pure chaos while we were there. The whole time we were there I would count down the minutes till I got to leave. What made it worse is even after the preschool we had about a mile walk home filled with kids popping out of bushes to come and get hugs from the white people.
I realized I started to despise these little kids. They made me so angry all the time. I became the guy who would never let them sit on my lap. I wouldn’t hold their hands. I pretty much wouldn’t let them touch me. They were usually covered in mango juice and grease which really grossed me out.
So after about 3 weeks of this another team showed up to visit us. We started talking about the preschool and how my team was just mentally and physically exhausted from it. I was honestly the only one really complaining. Little did I know that my friend had a video that was going to knock the wind right out of me.
It was a video called depraved indifference. It was a pastor speaking on kids all over the world who are abandoned. Orphans forced into living on the street. Kids that had no parents and just craved for someone to love them. Long story short the pastor talked about how if his son Hudson was stranded like that he would claw through a cement wall bare handed to reach his son and if he couldn’t, he would call every friend he had to go get him. To save his son.
He went on to talk about how you don’t mess with a fathers heart and I started to imagine if I had kids and I was a father. I was getting so fired up thinking about if my son was lost and all alone.
As I continued to listen my heart shattered because he went on to say aren’t all those abandoned kids God’s children? Aren’t they his? Aren’t we god’s hands and feet? Shouldn’t WE be the ones loving those kids?
I realized the past three weeks I had been messing with a fathers heart. God has been calling his friends to go and save his children. He had asked for my help and I turned away. By not loving on these kids and by pushing them away I was depriving them of a love they desperately needed. They craved to just be hugged or held because they have never had that.
I failed miserably last month. But God has a sense of humor because this month my team will be working with kids once again. All month. I am excited for this second chance! God has once again given me the opportunity to love on his children this trip. This time I won’t back down.
I have been blessed with friends and family who loved me. These kids deserve the same.
