Babies

Back in November 2012, I had two encounters with media that significantly affected me.  I was desperately heavy-hearted and grieving.  After days of muddling through my emotions and beliefs about what I had heard, I finally sat down to journal as I often do when my heart gets overwhelmed.  Writing is such a fantastic tool for me where I can dump out my heart like that catch-all kitchen drawer when it gets too full of junk.  When it is all out in front of me, I can make sense of it. As the old saying goes, I can find a place for everything and put everything in its place.   

So I wrote....

I listened online to my favorite minister talk about his visit to an African country.  His story was actually about how the grace message influenced the heart of another minister in giving, but that is NOT what I heard.  As he told about his minister friend, he included the details of the work being done there. I could hear nothing else after I heard the story.  This Pastor and his mother fed 700 orphans everyday on a very modest budget.  I was absolutely floored about their situation. The orphanage is on the boarder of two African countries.  Because of their location, neither country wants to claim the orphanage and therefore will not give citizenship to those children claiming they live in the neighboring country.  So not only were these babies abandoned by their parents, but they are also rejected by their countries.  They get no help from  government, and depend on this man and his mother to eat.

The very next day, we Americans exercised our citizenship and  went out to vote for our president.  After the election was over, I heard a liberal commentator give her two cents on why Obama was reelected.  She said that last year half of the babies born in the United States were unwanted.  She made some remark about how the American  people are making a stand for abortion by voting the way we did.  Her comments were actually so ludicris that even the other liberal commentators shot her down and quickly changed the subject.

I was grieving for BABIES!

I wrote about those two situations and vomited a whole bunch of emotional garb about my grief, but then suddenly slammed right into a huge writers block. There was nothing but facts to write.  I had a whole bunch of opinions that I would have thought were "right."  A nice little essay of what is wrong with the world and how crazy people are.  But the flow was suddenly cut off.  This was highly unusual.  Usually light followed the darkness bringing answers and calming the storm.  This time the dark came out, and what I thought would have been the light just was not able to come.  Hitting the proverbial wall was so shocking that I forgot about my grief and concentrated on the hiccup.  I was distracted by the thought, "What is wrong with my thinking about these situations?"    I knew the opinions in my heart were not the answer, and therefore it couldn't come forth on paper.  I would have to wait for the light.   

Finally after a few more weeks, the Holy Spirit was finally able to get through to me.  He said,  "Let's not curse the darkness, but rather bring forth the light."

That is when I realized that grieving over the facts made the issue about right-verses-wrong rather than allowing compassion to rise up and love people in the situation.  Oh I had some VERY strong opinions and words for those people who so blatantly disdain life and devalue people.  But focusing on the problem is not the solution. Death lives in right-verses-wrong thinking.  Cursing the dark only keeps things dark.   There is a higher way to see things that allows the light to erase the darkness and bring forth life.  

So what of these orphans?  Isn't it OUR system that makes citizenship to a country something of value?  Do I really think it takes a government to meet their needs?  And if I were to actually go there and "love" them based on some NEED I think they have, wouldn't my attitude of  LACK toward them be more detrimental to them than not having a birth certificate?

I know this doesn't make sense to our normal way of thinking, but I see it clearly now.   Yes, their situation is not picture perfect in our world and surely to bring some obstacles in our system.  But they are not hopeless!  Little kids don't even know or care about citizenship nor do they ever think of future obstacles.  What they know is if they are loved or not....Truly loved for who they are and not for their situation.

Can we love them as equals or do we have to provide for them to somehow patch them into our system to make us feel better about ourselves? Why can't we just love them just because they are loveable?   Can we feed them just because they need to eat?  Can we remind them that they are adopted and accepted by a good, loving, and perfect father?  Their Father sees no lack in them.  He doesn't think they need fixing.  He sees their end as clearly as their beginning. Can we see them as He sees them?

When those children see themselves as their Father does, whole and lacking nothing, they will soar over obstacles as if they don't even exist.  It is our mentality that builds obstacles and strips them of the beliefs that it would take to overcome their imagined slights.  Four-year-olds don't know they "can't" or "don't have" unless somebody tells them.  Really, we don't even have to tell them.  Kids pick up on our emotions.  We communicate with our very presence whether or not we think something is "wrong" with them or not.  In reality, there is nothing wrong.  We are the ones who make up the rules.  In the meantime, lets feed some kids and love on some babies.  Let's see them as their Father sees them.  And let's keep reminding them of who they are.  Children of the Most High.  Citizens of Heaven.