Small Silent Shadows

In my wild imagination I naturally dream up all sorts of ideas and plans and once one of my grand fantasies takes root I have this tendency to hold on tight.  Fists clenched tight with lots of determination I chase after it.  Like that time I wanted to add a whole second floor to our home.  We already had a room for each of our 3 children and I just figured they needed a huge playroom upstairs.  Isn’t that what every good-loving, Pottery Barn-magazine-reading, American mom would desire?  I had a builder come out to give us an estimate and I started planning our finances to fit this project.  About this same time a horrible massive earthquake left an already devastated Haiti in the rubble.  Where the heck was Haiti?  I didn’t have a clue but when that earthquake hit Haiti it shook my heart violently and my clenched fists released.  My Pottery Barn designed upstairs playroom dreams got lost in the rubble and somehow I was okay with that.  God desired something better for us and it had very little to do with increasing the size of our earthly home.  The money we would have spent on construction turned out to be the money God provided for us to adopt twin baby girls from an orphanage in a third world country.  Say what?  I know!  That was so NOT part of anything my imagination could have dreamed up.  I’m sure our playroom would have been pretty and fun and all but God had something different in mind.  He wanted to break our hearts for the things that break His heart.  He wanted us to make everlasting kingdom investments.  He wanted us to know Him more...to see His love and know Him in a deeper more intimate way.  He wanted us to see He is the One who defends and rescues the fatherless and places them in forever families.  And He was inviting us to participate in all of this.      

With lots of hyperventilating people wishing we would have just opted for the playroom, we took a deep breath and tossed our hearts to Haiti.  We did it scared in all of our incompetence.  I can tell you the journey ripped the flesh and exposed the heart raw…it was a lot of waiting… taking up our cross…ugly and painful.  But in the wait God was working, teaching, reshaping our brokenness.  Making something new.  Then came the grand miracle moment.  God did more than just let us touch and see the unseen...He actually made the unseen ours forever.  Looking back now with our twins in our arms I think of how close we came to missing it all.  This thought twists my stomach in knots…in one breath it’s both hysterical and sickening to think that an upstairs playroom could have caused us to miss out on our two joy-giving Haitian squealing tiny-tot princesses.  In a twist of irony I discovered that giving up my desires gave me the life I was craving all along. 

I don’t have that Pottery Barn decorated upstairs playroom but I’ve never been happier.  I love our one story home.  It’s FULL!!  Full of our great big family of 7.  Full of joy and love.   

Aww isn't that nice?  Seems like a cozy place to say, “And everyone lived happily ever after.  The End.”

But when the last paper was finally signed...when we were free to walk away from Haiti and Pastor Nahum’s impoverished village with Raphaella and Wana in our arms...everything in our core told us it was not over.  It wasn’t THE END.  It was only TO BE CONTINUED…It was our call to continue carrying our cross.      

God is still writing.  He's still defender of the fatherless and so our story continues.  There’s a whole big world full of invisible defenseless children dying of starvation in the streets while we sit paralyzed by the enormity of their needs.  We’d rather close our eyes because it’s all too painful and we don’t think we can make a serious difference.  But that’s a lie.  Children are dying because we believe the lie. 

Here’s the truth.  We can make a difference.  Hunger is not a terminal disease.  It’s completely preventable.  We can feed these kids now!  When we take up our cross fewer children will die.  We have to learn how to see, to look through to the beauty behind all the filth, disease, and pain.  There on the other side of our love in action is a beautiful healthy child.    

Let me paint a picture, ugly but true.  Countless dark eyes stare deep.  Hunger pains pierce but when they cried not a single one responded.  Stripped of all hope…helplessness became their reality.  They stopped reaching out.  Their cries faded and nothing was left but an eerie silence with small shadows.  

Waking up every morning in the 1^st world makes it easy for us to forget how different things are in most parts of the world.  But forgetting is not an option for people like Pastor Nahum.  He wakes up every morning in his 3^rd world to a terrible sea of small silent shadows but has nothing to offer them.  He fights for them in prayer and waits for God’s hand to provide. 

God will send food.  

God will stir the hearts.  

People will respond.  

Surely the sea of small silent shadows will come alive…they will eat and grow and sing and play.  Their glazed over eyes will sparkle once more.  They will feel the love of Jesus warm and real. 

Bread For a Hungry World is matching every dollar we give to help us send 270,000 nutrient packed meals to Pastor Nahum so he can feed his 200 school children a meal every single day for 3.75 years...that’s almost 4 years of food.  It only takes 6 months of eating these meals before you will notice the reversal of malnutrition.      

But we can’t send this food until we raise our part.  $4000 is what we need.  Seems like a lot of money for one person but we’ve already raised $1295 and I know if you chip in a little and then share this with your circle of friends and home churches we can raise the remaining $2705 needed to feed them quickly. 

No amount is too small.  You can shine light into their dark world.  Pray and give what you can.  Together we can feed them.  You can make a donation through Google checkout on the right sidebar of this blog or write a check.  Thank you for fighting for these kids!!