Guess How Much I Love You?

To say that this weekend was a difficult one is an understatement. The reality of the statistics of Swaziland have hit too close to home...with the ways that AIDS & the orphan crisis are defining this country. I had tried to prepare myself as well as I could for the all night vigil & then funeral for Gogo Lily...which is difficult in so many ways. But I was able to stay awake all night & followed along fairly well for the 9 hours, even though it was all in Siswati. It is a difficult thing to sit in grief for that long & to walk slowly through the process of saying goodbye & burying a casket. We have made it far too easy in America & go through it so quickly! To sit and watch all day as people dig the grave on the homestead, to see them prepare the food for the meal, to think through logistics of how to light up the area for finishing the digging at night, to hear the sounds of 300 people singing as a casket is carried across the homestead, to see the men of the area taking turns to shovel dirt into the grave, to see the women of the area gather rocks for marking the grave...overwhelming is an understatement!
But the thing I wasn't prepared for was the rest of the day after the funeral, once the family & friends had gone back to their homes. I got home from the funeral (which was right outside my fence) at about 6:30am on Sunday & took a quick nap. When I got up I tried to have a normal morning before church starting (at the team house where I live, so sleeping wasn't an option). After church I slept another hour or so before being woken up by a knock on the door. It was 3 of the girls who live next door & were taken care of by Gogo Lily. Throughout the afternoon they stayed around (as we do most weekends), coloring, sleeping on the concrete & singing. I was wishing I could communicate more with them but knew that they needed my presence more than anything else I had to offer that afternoon. I was trying not to think too much about what life would be like for these girls & the rest of the seven kids that Gogo Lily cared for, but God wanted me to think about it. To think of the reality of a 13 year old cooking for the other children, to think of all of them sleeping alone in a building, away from the other adults on their homestead. To wonder who would do their laundry, cook their food, pay their school fees, and look after them on a daily basis. God wanted me to sit in this pain and reality...and it was uncomfortable.
One of the girls asked if there were any books to read, so I went & grabbed a stack of children's books inside. But I lost it when the first book she pulled out of the stack was "Guess How Much I Love You?" The book is about a couple of rabbits, where the mother is reminding the child how much she loves it. Tears started flowing as I let the depth of this reality hit me...these kids didn't have parents who had shown them love in tangible ways or even were around on a daily basis. They wouldn't ever have biological parents to read a simple children's book like this to them, and they had just lost the woman who had shown them parental love for their lives up to this point. As the tears flowed down my cheeks, my heart was broken at a new level for these kids. But then, out of nowhere, one of the girls started singing, "Jesus loves me, this I know". God was reminding me that even though these kids won't ever know the love of a biological parent, they can know the love of the Father and, as hard as it is to believe, that is more than enough to transform their lives. And as we walk forward in these days, praying and talking about what roles God is calling His people to take in this difficult situation, I am reminded that He is their true Father and loves them much more than any human ever could. Guess how much He loves us...

"For this reason I bow my knees before the Father...so that you may have strength to comprehend what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge."
Ephesians 3:17-19

Reality Check...Another Look At Swaziland Statistics

I recently read that if you are a 15 year old in Swaziland, your chances of living to the age of 32 are 6%! SIX PERCENT!!! Translated...that means your chances of dying before you turn 32 are 94%. You are probably more likely to be struck by lightning or attacked by a hippo than live to be 32 if you live in Swaziland...all because of the AIDS crisis. Of the 900,000 people in the country, the orphan population is closing in on 200,000. And half of all 20 somethings have AIDS already. But the one that hits me hardest is the first statistic....6 %!
To put this into perspective, there are about 300 kids at the school across from where I will be staying. We have just been given permission to go over each week to teach these elementary aged kids about God's love...but reality is still there. According to that first statistic, only about 18 of those kids will live to be 32...meaning that 282 of the kids I will be spending time with this fall will probably die of AIDS (or some disease like TB resulting from a weakened immune system) before they are my age! God, have mercy!
So what has God called us to do in this seemingly hopeless situation? Without wanting to be too morbid or a Debbie-downer, the thing that I keep coming back to is that we must prepare them for eternity. Yes, we can encourage them in school, help them set goals, encourage them to dream about their future, provide them with food, clothes, and school supplies...but we must balance that with the reality that some experts have said that with the current birth/death rates the way they are, Swaziland won't exist by 2050 because AIDS will have ravaged it beyond repair. And James' words come ringing true to my ears....

"What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes"
(James 4:14).

And for children in Swaziland, this verse describes the frailty of life all around them, that they will be looking at death and eternity all too soon.
So as I go this weekend...prepared to love on the kids and the gogos ("grandmas" that cook, teach, and care for the kids at the carepoints), as well as those I will meet through house visits and other projects...in the back of my mind I will be thinking about the best gift that I can give them...the gift of the Gospel that we have been entrusted with. As much as I anticipate seeing their joyful faces when they receive any material possessions or food, the look on their faces when they realize they can have eternal peace and be with the Lord beyond this world is beyond description. To look in the face of a 28 year old woman who has "the peace that passes understanding" as she prepares for her death, to sit with a grieving gogo as she realizes her new responsibility of parenting her orphaned grandchildren...the only thing that can get anyone through those times is trusting in the sovereignty of God and the eternal hope that we have in Christ.
As I go, I hope to be used by God to pour into them, pray for them, teach them, and encourage them as if they were a terminally ill child in the hospital...because they are...statistics have given them only 25 more years to live at most. Yet I go hopeful, because as we trust in what Christ did for us on the cross, we can cling to the promise that

"the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be His people, and God Himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away...for He is making all things new."
(Revelation 21:3-5)

This world is temporary because we were created for another world with unhindered intimacy with the God of the universe...and we can begin to live in that now!

Visiting Orphans

What effect does it have on your longings when you think that God says “true religion” is to “visit orphans”?

The effect that it has on me it to make me want to love like Jesus loved and not always be thinking of earthly payoff. Face it, a few kids are cute, but most street kids will be thankless, rude, dirty, diseased, scar-faced, shifty-eyed, lice infested, suspicious, with bad smells and rotten teeth. If we minister mainly for the earthly payoff, we will burn out in a year.

Jesus did not say, “True religion is converting orphans.” He did not say, “True religion is making orphans mature and successful adults.” He said, “True religion is visiting orphans.” Results are God’s business. Obedience is ours. Perhaps when we grasp this, we will be freed from our earth-bound way of thinking and released to minister to the ones who are least likely to thank us.
~ J. Piper (www.desiringgod.org)

Forgotten People

Recently, I was blessed to be able to spend some time in Juarez with some very special kids at an orphanage. These kids, who have been abandoned by their families, are living very tough lives in a city that is known for it's violence and evil. The atrocities that are happening in this town are at times hard to comprehend, and so often when we can't comprehend something, we ignore it. Or we hear the statistics so often that we become too familiar with them and can become numb to them. But as I spent time with these forgotten kids, I was convicted.Convicted because one of the comments I heard from several people in Juarez was that they felt like the church just over the border in the US had become so numb to the deadly statistics that they just forgot about their brothers and sisters who were suffering just miles from where they are living in comfort and safety.
And I am among the guilty! Juarez isn't that far from where I am, yet I haven't even consistently prayed for what is going on there. I confess that I am not prompted to pray enough - even as I read more stories on the killings in Juarez or hear another story on the news.
Not only was I convicted about Juarez, but it also spurred me on to ask what my Juarez is here in Denver. Who are the people who are suffering that I am often overlooking? Who are the people who are suffering that I have become numb to as I hear their stories?
Lord, let me be more like the Samaritan who has compassionate eyes to see those in need, and less like the man who asked "Who is my neighbor?" as he tried to avoid the messiness and danger of getting involved in serving those in need.

Rejoice With Those Who Rejoice

One morning as we were at the care point waiting for the food to be ready for the kids, we started singing a few songs with the preschoolers (any where from 1 yr olds to 6 yr olds). We went through the familiar ones, and then they started singing a song that said,

“The Lord is going to bless someone today....it may be you, it may be me, it may be somebody else.”

I was humbled by the fact that these kids, who have so little, who have been through so much, and who have a very hard life ahead of them are singing about how they can rejoice when others around them are blessed.
So often our first impulse when someone near us is blessed is to ask where our blessing is, or how we can earn it, or what we didn’t do right....yet true community and God-honoring love comes when we put others before ourselves. To be able to truly rejoice when someone else gets blessed, and not ask "why didn't I get that?" To be able to truly grieve with someone who grieves, without our first thought being, "Whew! I'm glad that didn't happen to me!"
God took me half way around the world to teach me through a bunch of preschoolers that I have a long way to go before I can say with integrity that I live out the command in Romans 12:15...

"Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.”