Floored.

     This is the week that we were supposed to be at the orphanage, suppsoed to be loving and hugging these beyond amazing kids, watching God work in huge ways in that place that feels so much like Holy Ground to me. Instead we are home, helping figure out Georgia;s heart stuff and that feels like where we are supposed to be. Our eyes are fixed on December and getting down there again.

    This weekend we headed out camping and right before we left I checked the mail and got an update from the orphanage. One of the stories that I read there has been churning in my heart all weekend and I wanted to share.

    So there are around 100 kids living in the orphanage itself, all different ages, boys and girls. Every summer the teens go to a summer camp. In my mind's eye I imagine this as a highlight of the year. Getting away, being able to just play and be a kid for a whole week away from the pressures of helping with the littler ones...just being a teen at summer camp.

    This year the teens made a choice, one that honestly never would have crossed my mature Christian mind. There had been some littler children who had lived at the orphanage for awhile when their parents were struggling and needed a safe place for their kids to stay. Their parents were doing better and the children had moved back with them but they did not have a home.

     The teens heard about this and what did they decide to do. These teen orphans who have little to nothing themselves decided to give up their summer camp and spend the week building a home for this family. Do you get that? They traded their week away for a week of sweat in the Mexican sun for little ones in need. They created what they dream of (a family, a home) for someone else.

   As they were building (donors supplied the materials), one boy noticed that the family did not have extra clothing. So they went back to the orphanage and gathered any extras that the children had and clothed the family.

    Another teen noticed that they did not have very much food. Some they went back to the orphanage (which lives on prayers and donations and many times has cupboards that are far from full) and gathered food to fill this family's cupboards.

     And yet another teen noticed that the children did not have toys...so they went back to the orphanage and told the children there (who only have one or two themselves). .. and the orphans gave from what they had to send toys to these children.

     And yet another teen girl noticed that the little girl was wearing dirty clothes...so she bathed her, put her in a dress and did her hair for her.

    and I just cannot picture a better example of this verse:

“Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in,  I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’

“Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink?  When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you?  When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’

“The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’

Matthew 25:34-40

 

That is the Gospel right there shining so brightly that it makes me want to hide my selfish face. Oh Lord, please let me be more like these children that the world sees as the least.

 

and it makes everything in me want to jump into action. I do not want to sit idle, I do not want to be immersed in what matters only to me, what only serves me.

 

Oh Lord show me the way to be a part of that kind of love.