Don't let the poverty kill any more

Ismael, you are forever mine.  I love you!!

Every morning I gather my 5 child loves and we pray out loud together.  They close their eyes, I close mine, and one by one they talk to Jesus.  It’s true that since the day God brought our Raphaella and Wana home nearly a year ago my kids don’t say a single prayer without first praising God for this miracle He did.  Oh this untamed love for their new sisters—where does it come from?  Without doubt it’s from the Father above. 

And I wish the prayers of a child were only prayers of praise but almost always after the praises, from the lips of my own children, come the pleas.  My children are praying to Jesus—asking Him to take away the cancer from their grandmother—asking Him not to let the poverty kill any more children in Haiti.  I try to breathe.  These things are hard.  I flounder through in this temporary life, searching desperately to make sense of even a little of it, still I just can’t.  Things like cancer and poverty break the world to pieces and I have no words.  No answers for me or my children.  But there’s a mysterious twist of peace and comfort that clothes a child of the most High God who has learned to trust Him in the unknown. 

                                                                                                        

Can I tell you once more about the children in Pastor Nahum’s village?  

Mack, Woodma, Cheche, Wilkens, Boubou, & Jephte

I've held their faces in my hands, looked deep in their eyes, and felt the rhythm of their little beating hearts.  Real and beautiful, each of them were created by the Father, in His image, for a special purpose in His kingdom.  Their whole lives are before them but something is not right.  They are sick, every one of them, infected with gross poverty.  Some are orphaned, some abandoned, and all of them are helpless.  I want to pull them in close.  Only there’s too many of them.  Oh, if I could hold them long enough, rocking them in my arms until it didn't hurt anymore, until all the pain was gone.  I would do it.  All of this stirs me—turns me into a total lunatic.  I've learned its’ not possible to remove something my Maker buries deep in my soul.  Haiti is stuck in my heart.  So I stuff my feelings into words hoping someone is reading—hoping someone will hear and respond to these poverty infected children.  But my typed words are limited.  You’d have to see my face because only the eyes can fully express the way I love these kids.  I hear my Maker whisper, “The love you feel for these children comes from Me.  I have chosen you to be a voice for them.  Don’t give up.  Fight for them.” 

I can’t think of a more beautiful honor or privilege to have than being called by God to love the children in Pastor Nahum’s village and be their voice.  The prayers of my own children from this morning flash in my mind again.  At first I was lost in the brokenness but then I heard it once more new, “Please Jesus, don’t let the poverty kill any more of the Haitian children in Raphaella and Wana’s village.  Amen.”  Did you hear it—the faith of a 1^st world child praying for a 3^rd world child?  I have to sit here and soak it all in.  Rich or poor, we are all the same.  We are all in need of the saving grace of Jesus.  We are all valuable in His eyes.  

From my heart, I repeat my child's prayer, "Please, Jesus, don't let the poverty kill any more of the Haitian children."

Here’s what I know...God wants to use us.  We are His church called by Him to respond to the least of these. 

And the good news is this:  The redemptive love of Jesus has the power to wipe out poverty and rescue lost souls.  I believe it. 

It’s His perfect love within us that fights the battle against poverty, brings relief to the broken, and saves the lost. The cure for the lost and the poor comes through the hearts and hands of the church. 

Here's the question:  Once the church sees the needy and hears them crying out, will we respond with wild urgency? 

Jesus, help us be the church.