Reflective Living {At What Cost}

While I was in Eastern Africa, I spent just a few days at a baby home. While I was there I saw children who had been neglected by their parents. One little baby seemed to have some sort of mental illness, but I learned that she had been physically abused by her mother and thrown against a wall multiple times. Now this little girl is impaired for the rest of her life.

Each little child I held and loved on had a story of their own. Each had a story of various levels of abandonment, or of neglect, or even of abuse.

As I held these children who were at such an important stage of their development, I realized how important proper care for the orphaned really is.

In Africa, many unwanted children are left for dead and thrown away. Some will get thrown into the pit of an outhouse. Other's may be abandoned by their fathers as their mothers die in childbirth. Others will be taken to a family member who cannot adequately provide for them.

I've held a tiny three year old boy in my arms with a body so skinny, his clothes would not stay on him. But his heart is so big, and he is so in need of love. Who knows, if he had not been brought to the baby home, he might not be alive today.

What I experienced in my heart as I held these children broke it even more than it had already been broken. It moved me to realize the importance of Christ-followers living out the Scriptures. In Roman times, the Roman people would leave unwanted babies in the dump or thrown in to the outhouse pits, very much like what happens in Africa today. During that time, Christians were known for rescuing these abandoned children and raising them as their own. Why are we not doing the same?

When Jesus saw the multitudes, the Bible says that He was moved with compassion. Love turned into action. I see these children in my mind whose little hands I have held, and it moves me with compassion.

I am a firm believer that you cannot have compassion for someone and stand idle as they suffer.

Compassion moves you, it changes you, it calls you to action.

I can no longer pretend that I do not know there is a real need. I have seen it with my own eyes. Seen the value of rescuing a human life that is so precious to God. His heart is for the weary, the neglected, the poor, and the needy. What better way to share the love of God than by pulling a person out of neglect and a future full of hopelessness, and giving them a chance to live?

Sounds like a life reflective of Christ and what He and the Father have done for me and you at Calvary. Hmm. . . I would rather have that life than any other.